Cameron's Christmas pt 2
by Orffyreus
Summary: The X-mas preps are put on hold due to Cameron's malfunction. Derek and Sarah get the shocks of their lives, changing some of their views forever. Will John succeed in bringing Cameron back or will his Christmas Carol turn into a Nightmare Before X-mas?
1. Chapter 1

Author's note:  
>This is the second part of my Christmas story, continuing from where we left off in part one. You should have read part one for this to make any sense. And don't forget that the last two episodes of season 2 never happened here.<p>

**Cameron's Christmas  
>(part two)<strong>

**Chapter One**

The world around him dissolved. The heavens contracted, reducing the stars to his size and throwing them over the common, only permitting them to collapse, to be pulled into the churning maelstrom that had opened up inside him, leaving nothing in their wake apart from the dark decades of singularity's oblivion. Whirling blackness.

But then there was light. Two points of light. Reflections.

_She's the sun…_

The future leader of mankind had broken down and wept copiously over the lifeless form of his cyborg protector, tears spilling onto the already sodden coat he had placed over her shoulders to keep his love warm.

She had told him not to. In that cold winter's night she had cared more for him than for herself. Like she always had.

He had cried her name, a dozen times he had called it. He'd shaken her, even slapped her face in a futile attempt to revive her, before the panic that had been relentlessly creeping up inside him took hold of his heart in its iron grasp, clouding his reasoning, rendering him barely conscious.

Her dark eyes were open, staring unblinkingly at the night sky, the stars' reflections twinkling out of them. Shining.

_She's the sun…_

John forced himself to try and concentrate on those specks of light in her eyes. He had to free himself from this mental abyss. He would not give in and let his tired out body succumb to the freezing cold inside him. And all around him.  
>Hadn't his mother once told him that you die from the cold if you sit down and rest or fall asleep in the arctic?<br>Whatever…

_I won't let anything happen to you…_

Slowly, forcefully, John managed to stand up, taking deep breaths to calm himself down. He knew he was on the verge of a nervous breakdown and he could not afford to lose control. Not now when Cameron needed him.  
>Telling himself again and again that she was a cyborg, a machine, and therefore could not be dead, John felt his mind eventually clear. Experience acquired in the long years his mother had trained him finally kicked back in and he ascertained the situation.<p>

He was stranded in the middle of a field, it was pitch black and he was soaking wet and freezing. Cameron had glitched, malfunctioned, and her system had shut down for some reason. Such was his situation.  
>There were no obvious threats he could detect. Even if this had been an ambush, he thought, it couldn't be metal because he'd have been dead by now. And if there were any human threats about, they clearly couldn't see him as much as he could see them. On the other hand, if they had night vision devices he'd also have been dead by now, John concluded.<p>

_Which deems the situation actually quite safe,_ he thought with a sneer, running his fingers through his hair and sighing.

His main concern at the moment was getting Cameron home. She was too heavy to carry, he knew that from previous attempts at moving her. He and his mother had had to chuck an electrocuted and shut down Cameron out of a third storey window once to get her out of a building as quickly as possible before a Triple Eight showed up.

There was nothing else for it. He would have to resort to dragging her along through the snow.

It was easier than he had expected, thanks to the now frozen snow allowing her body to glide a little. John had taken hold of her arms and was pulling her along behind him.  
>It was still hard work, though. After ten minutes, he was completely knackered. At least it was slightly downhill and he could already see the street lights from the road they had come by.<br>_Jeez, why couldn't we have brought a sledge…_

He needed to rest just for a little while to get his strength back. Crouching down next to her, John rested Cameron's head against his rapidly rising and falling chest and absent-mindedly began to stroke her hair out of her face.

"It's going to be okay. Don't worry, I'll never leave you" he whispered in her ear, hoping that she would be able to hear him in some miraculous way.  
><em>Don't leave me, Cameron…<em>

Just as his tears threatened to well up again, John suddenly remembered something.

_Mobile…_

He frantically started searching through his pockets for his mobile phone but it wasn't there.  
><em>Blast! I know I took it with me, where the hell<em>—_…_

Then it came to him. He had placed it in one of the pockets of his coat before he and Cameron had gone shopping in the morning. Ransacking his coat, which Cameron was wearing, for the phone, he finally felt it tucked away in the inside pocket.  
>Breathing a sigh of relief and shaking his head at himself for not having thought about calling his Mom in the first place, John took his mobile out and pressed the key-lock release.<p>

Nothing happened. The display remained dead whatever he pressed.

"It can't be empty! I charged it last night!" he howled in dismay, hurling the idiotic device away as hard as he could.  
>"Bastard things, they never ever work when you need them!"<p>

After his initial rage had subsided, a beaten John got to his feet and was just about to start pulling his prostrate protector down towards the street again, when a sudden thought struck him.  
><em>Cameron's mobile…<em>

She always carried a telephone on her as well, even if John for the life of him couldn't fathom out where she sometimes put it, since her outfits didn't always have pockets. At least her leather jacket had, though, and it was in one of its pockets in which John found her mobile phone.  
>Still wondering where she would have hidden it if she wasn't wearing her jacket and instantly dismissing the idea of secret compartments with a shake of his head, John took it out and prayed to the god of microelectronics.<br>_Dear Steve, please let it work…_

His prayers were answered as the display lit up.

_I don't believe it. No network coverage…_

It cost John all the self-control he was able to summon to refrain from uniting Cameron's mobile with his own. After having shut his eyes and counted to ten, he placed the phone in his pocket, grabbed Cameron's arms and continued on his way down towards the street, dragging her along behind him again like a sleigh.

Almost on autopilot, John relentlessly placed one foot in front of the other, stomping through the snow like a machine and ignoring the searing pain in his arms as his muscles protested with every step he took.  
>"Not far now" he wheezed, as the first street light was now only a few feet away.<p>

There was a park bench under the street lamp at the edge of the meadow and it was onto this an utterly worn out John collapsed after having carefully sat down his limp cyborg, taking care that she wouldn't slide off.  
>There was no way he would make it back to the house like this. And he couldn't just drag her along behind him through the streets. It would look a trifle odd, to say the least, should anyone spot them.<p>

_I hope the damn phone works now…_  
>Trembling with the cold and his exhaustion, John slipped his numb hand into his pocket and withdrew it clutching the phone in anticipation.<br>_Yes! Thank you, Steve. Two bars should be enough…_  
>A thoroughly relieved John was just about to dial his mother's number, when…<p>

"'Ello, 'ello, 'ello. What's all this, then?"

_Dammit. The law. Always when you don't need them…_

Unbeknownst to John, a patrol car had silently drawn up at the curb near the bench where they were sitting, and its occupants were strolling towards them.

"You need help, son?" the older of the two coppers asked John whilst regarding Cameron with a concerned frown. "Is she sick?"

"No, thank you, Sir, we're good. She's good" John hastily replied, wishing this was all a dream and that he would please wake up now.

The younger copper turned to his colleague. "She doesn't look that good to me, Hank."

"No, Burt, she doesn't" the older, fat one replied, before he addressed John again.  
>"What's wrong with her? She been drinking?"<p>

_Jeez…_  
>"Err … yeah. We've been to a Christmas party and, err … well you know how it is. She's never touched any before and overdid it a little. We're just on our way home, Sir."<br>_Please go away…_

The fat copper made no intention of leaving; instead he walked up to Cameron and took her by the wrist, trying to feel her pulse. His left eyebrow crept up his forehead and he placed his hand on her neck, trying to find a better spot.

Shaking his head in concern, he turned to his younger companion.  
>"It's very weak and she's freezing cold. Get on the radio, Burt. She needs medical attention."<p>

"Right, Hank. And look at her eyes! She's out cold" Burt remarked at Cameron's unblinking stare, before he returned to the patrol car.

John watched the two police men's interaction incredulously.  
><em>Weak pulse indeed…<em>  
>He put his head in his hands. They were going to cart Cameron off to hospital. What if the doctors X-rayed her? John didn't so much care about their cover being busted but of what would happen to Cameron, if her secret were revealed.<p>

Noticing the boy's distress, the copper called Hank placed a hand on John's shoulder.  
>"It's okay, son, we're calling an ambulance."<br>He did an 'I-feel-your-pain' lip bite which he had once seen Bill Clinton perform on television and which he had perfected to the point of absurdity.

Burt joined his colleague again and informed them that the ambulance was on its way.  
>"Soon have you at the hospital" he said to the unresponsive girl on the bench.<br>Then he turned to John and asked "By the way, you have any ID on you?"

_Dammit…_

John knew he couldn't afford to let the police men see their identities. It would involve awkward questions. He also couldn't afford to let Cameron be taken to hospital. Trying again to suppress the feeling of panic which was rising in him, John frantically checked his options.  
>The trouble was, he had none. He considered running for it, but he wouldn't even make it a few yards dragging Cameron along. And leaving her was definitely not an option.<br>If he showed them their IDs and the coppers checked them, he'd be nicked on the spot and Cameron would be hauled off to hospital.  
>If he didn't show them their IDs, they'd probably search him and find the gun tucked in his waistband for which he had no licence. He'd be nicked on the spot and Cameron would be hauled off to hospital.<p>

"Your ID, son" the fat copper now insisted, sauntering up beside his colleague in the usual 'you spread out – I'll surround them' fashion, his thumbs in his belt loops while he presented his formidable stomach.

"Err … I haven't got it on me."

"What about her?"

Thinking fast and throwing caution to the wind, John made up a cock and bull story.  
>"We left her handbag at the party with our IDs in it. I'm sorry, Sir. It was just, I wanted to get her home before she passed out, you know, and I forgot all about her bag. I'll collect it tomorrow."<p>

Hank considered him for a moment. "Okay, son. I'll make you a deal. You call your parents. If they come and pick you up I'll let you go with a warning" he offered, indicating towards the mobile still in John's hand.

"I've already tried that, Sir. There's no one picking up" John told the police man, experiencing an uncanny feeling of déjà vu.

"What about her parents?"

"Um … they live abroad. Friends of my Mom's. She's staying at our house."

"Hmm" Hank was mulling over John's answer when Burt interrupted.

"Ho! So that's why you wanted to get her home, eh? A pretty girl staying at your house. Well, bang goes your Christmas Eve, then, doesn't it?" Burt leered, grinned wickedly.

"Shuddup, Burt" Hank shot his colleague a disgusted look. "Look, son. As soon as the ambulance arrives you're coming with us to the hospital. You can give your mother another call from there."

Just then, John heard the sound of a vehicle approaching.  
><em>Must be the ambulance. Oh Christ…<em>

John's heart leapt into his throat as the sound of tyres in the snow gradually grew louder. Then a car slowly passed them. He let out the breath he didn't know he had been holding.  
><em>Phew! It wasn't an ambulance, just a passing car…<em>  
>He couldn't make it out all that clearly, but he thought it must have been a Jeep.<p>

The fat copper had been watching John's obvious apprehension at the sound of the arriving car. He regarded John thoughtfully for a while and then spoke to the younger officer standing next to him, his expression doubtful, still looking at John.  
>"You know what, Burt? There's something fishy going on here. I'm not so sure about—"<p>

_Whack_

Hank collapsed into a heap on the ground with a splat, right in front of his colleague. Burt's eyes widened in astonishment.  
>"Hank? Hank! What the hell—"<p>

_Whack_

Burt joined his colleague in the snow.

"Bloody hell, John, what have you done?" an irate Sarah Connor hissed, gesturing at the immobile coppers at her feet and the equally immobile cyborg residing on the bench next to her son.

"Mom!"

Wonderful, blissful relief flooded through John as he leapt up and rushed over to his mother, hugging her. Sarah ruffled his hair and patted him on the back. All his pent up tension was suddenly released at once and he started sobbing into her shoulder.

"Tell me what happened, John" was all she said. She didn't scold him for being soaking wet, or berate him for being in open ground without any cover, without an exit. Sarah knew her son's grief must have something to do with the cyborg, she guessed the cause of it had to be some terrible loss. Sarah knew enough about grief, about losing things. In sort of ran in the family.  
><em>We all lose people we love…<em>

"Mom…" John managed to force out between sobs "she's gone, she's…"

Sarah held her shaking son tight, stroking his head like she used to when he was little, and hummed some tuneless melody, which used to comfort him when he was afraid of the dark in the South American jungles.  
>He gradually calmed down and pulled out of his mother's embrace, breathing heavily and wiping his nose on his sleeve. Sarah automatically went through her pockets for a tissue.<p>

"We have to get her home, Mom. I have to bring her back."  
>He stared at her wide-eyed. "I can't loose her. I can't go through all this again."<p>

John stumbled shakily back to the bench and sat down next to Cameron. His voice started to quaver as he looked up at his mother with pleading eyes.  
>"Please, Mom. You said you'd stop it…"<p>

_He really loves her…_  
>Sarah's face was set as she fought the urge to shout at her son, to try and make him understand that the cyborg – should he be able to repair or resuscitate her or <em>whatever<em> – would never be able to love him back.

_They don't have feelings. They don't know love…_

Sarah recalled what she had said to him a long time ago in a similar situation. She remembered the cyborg's lifeless body lying in the back of the ambulance, its features seemingly so innocent, and how her son had spent the whole drive trying to mend her chip.  
>She had already suspected at the time that John's affection towards the machine was more than just caring. One more reason why Sarah had decided that she had to convince him of the danger he was putting himself into, if they didn't destroy Cameron.<p>

But she had failed.

She had realised that right after John had reinserted Cameron's chip and helped his cyborg out of the bed of the truck, standing next to her as if they were meant to be, as if defying anybody to try and separate them.  
>Sarah had understood. Hated it, but understood. <em>Her son was in love with a machine<em>.

Sarah Connor had sworn to herself that she would destroy the machine within the blink of an eye, should it develop any more hostile moves against her son, no matter what. All her suspicions about Cameron had been fulfilled, she was not to be trusted.  
>And John had to be dissuaded from treating her like a human girl. For she was not, she was a cyborg from the future programmed with a specific mission, a mere machine and dangerous at that. She would not let her son fall for a lump of metal. Period.<p>

Sarah actually had thought that she had won, that John had come to his senses, when he had started to push the cyborg away. Even though Sarah hadn't approved of the flaunting girl at all and had deemed it unwise, she was deep down nevertheless still relieved that John had started going out with Riley, a _human_ girl. _Anything's better than the machine_, she had thought.

But now, seeing her son stroking the immobile machine's cheek so tenderly, Sarah felt something stir within her. She knew what it was like to love. Like she had when she was nineteen and had loved Kyle. The one day and night she had had with him had been enough to last a lifetime. Even Charley could never have changed that.

Sarah decided.

"I'll stop it."

She strode over to the bench and started to drag Cameron's heavy body by its arms towards the Jeep parked a few yards away.

"Thanks, Mom" John said hoarsely, getting to his feet to help his mother. Together, they hastily dragged Cameron along the snowy street, slipping and sliding on their way. With a bit of a struggle, they managed to heave their burden into one of the rear seats, just as they heard a low groan emitting from one of the coppers Sarah had downed.

"Get in the car, John. We need to go" Sarah urged him.  
>John quickly got in the back beside Cameron and fastened their seatbelts as Sarah tore away.<p>

…


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two**

Derek Reese was pissed off. He hated the slush on the streets because it made him drive slowly. He hated the other drivers for getting in his way. He hated the fact that it was getting later by the minute and he was getting more and more hungry.  
><em>Bet they're already tucking in to my pizzas…<em>

He also hated cold pizza but he would force himself to eat it just to spite the _metal_. If _it_ had left him any, that was. Remembering how _it_ had eaten, no, _consumed_ the ice cream and had apparently even _enjoyed_ doing so, brought a scowl to Derek's face.  
><em>If it only so much as touches my pizzas…<em>

Pushing down harder on the accelerator, Derek imagined how blissful it would be if the _machine_ had choked on _its_ pizza and gone into indefinite standby or something like that. He hoped that that would be _its_ Christmas present to him, if _it_ got him anything at all, that was.  
>Tired of wishful thinking, Derek sighed and looked at his watch.<br>_Not long to go now…_

He was very nearly home, it should only take him about a quarter of an hour from here, he estimated. Derek knew the road well. It wound its way through the woods on the outskirts of the city and was the quickest way back from where he had collected Charley's gear.  
>Soon the familiar neon lettering of the 247 petrol station situated at the wood's edge was visible through the forest gloom. It had a magnificent and enormous European style Christmas tree placed outside, completely covered with electric lights, blinking and glittering in many colours. The sudden brightness made Derek squint as he passed it.  
><em>Bleedin' Krauts. Always have to overdo everything. At least our lights don't blink…<em>

"Dammit!"  
>Derek slammed on the brakes and made the SUV skid round in a perfect U-turn that would have done any stuntman proud.<br>_Nearly forgot the lights…_

Praying that the Kraut hadn't used them all up on his own tree, Derek turned into the petrol station and pulled up outside the shop, which actually resembled a small shopping centre.  
><em>Neat<em>, Derek thought as he stepped inside, admiring the huge variety of household goods, foodstuff and the car care section in particular.  
><em>Wonder if they've got a spare wing mirror…<em>

He found what he was looking for in the third row of shelves. Not his long sought-after wing mirror but a box containing electric Christmas tree lights. Making sure to pick up the non-blinking type he noticed that they were fitted with a continental European plug.  
>Replacing them on the shelf and wondering if the crafty bugger had bought them on the nod somewhere in his hometown to flog here, Derek found the same type with an American plug. Noticing the difference in price he nearly dropped the box.<br>_The bastard, charging you three dollars extra for the plug…_

Shaking his head over how some people scraped a living he was just about to make his way to the counter when someone bumped into him.

"Oh, tut mir leid. Entschuldigen Sie" the square-headed man said, as he looked up at Derek from the dictionary he was flipping through.

"Eh?" Derek remarked, frowning.

The man was just about to turn to his wife who was pushing a trolley load of shopping towards the counter, puffing and panting ostentatiously, when he noticed the box of lights Derek was carrying.

"Wo haben Sie denn die Lichterkette gefunden? Wir hatten schon überall danach gesucht."

Derek scratched his head, trying to remember any scraps of German he had learnt a long time ago at school before the bombs had dropped.  
>"<em>Nitch verstayn<em>" he said to the bewildered man who immediately started to turn over the thumbed pages of his dictionary again with a practiced speed that made Derek blink.

"Der lamps necklass hier. Vere haff you find?" the man asked.

Before Derek burst out laughing he noticed the place's proprietor ambling along one of the aisles.  
>"Oi! Fritz!" he called out to the Kraut, waving and gesticulating madly.<p>

The owner frowned a little at Derek's choice of words to summon him, but nevertheless hurried over to him and the other man, who had instantly looked up from his dictionary at hearing Derek call his name.

"What seems to be the trouble, Sir?" the manager asked politely.

Derek pointed at the man holding the dictionary.  
>"He's one of your kind and I think he's after buying his wife a necklace as a Christmas present or something" Derek informed him, stepping aside. "Here, you have a bash."<br>With that, he left the two men to do business in their native tongue and hurried off to the counter.  
><em>Wish these foreigners would learn English…<em>

After he had paid for his lights Derek asked the cashier where the lavatories were. He had wanted to wait until he was home but had become rather desperate.

"At the back of the store, Sir. Through the restaurant" the young woman informed a teetering Derek who was standing on one leg. "But you'll need to purchase a token."

"WHAT!" an outraged Derek roared. "Don't you come the old acid with me, darlin'. I've just bleedin' bought something in here and I'm entitled to a piddle if I want to."

Just as the young woman was about to depress the silent alarm button under the counter, the manager appeared on the scene. "What seems to be the problem now, Sir?"

Derek rounded on the man.  
>"I'll give you a problem in a minute. You're not implementing your Kraut ways upon me, mate. Wanting me to pay for havin' a slash indeed. I'll do it up yer bloody Christmas tree if I have to."<p>

Noticing a somewhat manic glint in Derek's eyes and froth appearing on his lips, the petrol station's proprietor hastily retreated to the safety of his office behind the counter after having whispered something to his employee. The young woman uneasily handed Derek a token with _Sanitex_ printed on it and wished him a Merry Christmas as he snatched it out of her hand and tore through the store seeking sanctuary.

…

"Are you okay, John?" Sarah asked, as she tore along the streets towards their house, looking in the rear view mirror at her son who was slumped in the back seat chewing his fingernails, something he hadn't done for over ten years. She just caught herself in time from telling him to stop it.

John didn't answer. All he did was vacantly stare at the machine next to him.

"Are you injured?"

Still no answer.

Sarah turned to face her son while the Jeep shot along the road towards a set of green traffic lights. "Talk to me, John. What happened?" she snapped.

"Whoa! Mom!" John shouted and pointed at the now red lights ahead, his eyes wide in alarm as he realized she had taken her eyes off of the road and was looking at him.

Sarah whipped round and slammed on the brakes, the Jeep screeching to a halt in the middle of the crossing. Luckily, the driver of the lorry just about to intersect had once been an amateur stock car racer and managed to manoeuvre his forty ton vehicle around the tiny car by mere inches. He sounded the horn furiously as the lorry roared off into the distance after the near miss and uttered oaths which, fortunately, nobody was capable of hearing.

"Jeez, Mom!" a shocked John exclaimed accusingly "You'd think you'd have learnt from last time."

"Oh, I'm sorry I'm concerned about you" Sarah retorted, putting her foot down again and immediately continuing to tear down the street.

"There's nothing wrong with me. It's Cameron you should be concerned about" John spat at his mother.

Sarah glanced in the rear view mirror at the motionless machine sitting next to her son. If it weren't for her open eyes, she would look like she was sleeping. Sarah couldn't help admitting that she _did_ feel a stab of pity as she took in the cyborg girl's innocent appearance. She had to consciously remind herself of what the girl really was.

"What happened to her? Were you attacked?" she inquired, supposing that if they had been ambushed, then Cameron had probably been damaged while defending John. She couldn't deny her sudden genuine concern for the cyborg.

"No" John forced out, reliving the most terrible moments of his life once more.  
>"I don't know what happened. We were walking back home across the common when she just…" he broke off, his throat constricting again.<p>

Sarah felt so sorry for her son, she almost physically felt the pain he was in. She would do anything she could to stop it.  
>"We'll be home in a minute. Then you can tell me exactly what happened before she…, well, shut down, alright?"<p>

John merely nodded. He had been fiddling with the cover of the rear glove compartment while talking to his mother, absent-mindedly opening and closing the lid. As he now glanced inside, his attention was caught by a familiar photographic print-out of Cameron which laid amongst magazines, pens and various other odds and sods, the sort of things you'd expect to find in a glove compartment. He pulled the photograph out and stared at it.  
>It was one of the photos Cromartie had used to track him and Cameron down in Mexico, John remembered. The prints had been strewn across the floor of the terminator's blue Camaro they had procured together with Agent Ellison as a getaway car. On an impulse, John had at the time secretly salvaged Cameron's photo and kept it. He wondered how it had ended up in the Jeep, for he was sure he had placed it inside one of his drawers for safe keeping.<br>For treasuring…

Cameron's blank face stared up at him from the photograph taken long ago, reflecting every street light. John turned his head to look at her lifeless form sitting next to him. She bore that same blank expression as in the picture in his hands, although her features seemed to come to life from the peculiar shadow-play on her face with each street light they passed. As if she were watching him, smiling.  
><em>Every street lamp's her reminder…<em>

John closed his eyes. His fingers clenched around the photograph, screwing it up, the light from other days becoming a memory she had left behind.

They turned a last corner before they drove down the quiet street to their house. Sarah manoeuvred the Jeep into the driveway and stopped right outside the front door.  
>The garden still looked as peaceful as it had when she and Derek had left. The frozen snow on the roof was glittering in the moonlight and the icicles hanging from the gutters were sparkling.<br>Sarah turned to look at her son and his cyborg. She had so desperately wanted John's first Christmas to be a happy one…

…

"Aah, that's better. I needed that" a relieved Derek announced to the petrol station's restaurant at large before he strode off towards the exit. Seeing another _Notausgang_ sign and fleetingly wondering why on earth Germans put green signs on various doors telling you that this particular one was _not_ an exit if it would be much easier to just put _Ausgang_ on the appropriate one, Derek left the shop through the sign-less door and headed for his SUV.

He dumped the box of electric lights on the passenger's seat after one last disappointed glance at his shattered wing mirror and started the engine. Derek smiled to himself, glad that he would be home in about ten minutes, if he put his foot down.

Reminding himself he'd have to park in the street in order to smuggle in his presents unnoticed, Derek sincerely hoped that the _metal_ would be occupied with his nephew. Which _it_ usually was, apart from during _its_ night-time wanderings while John was asleep, when _it_ made sure Derek got no kip whatsoever.  
><em>Ghosting about the house and staring vacantly out of the windows like that. It's a misery to itself and a burden to others…<em>

Derek actually caught himself wondering if terminators can get bored. Instantly dismissing the idiotic notion, he reminded himself that he shouldn't care less if the cyborg's superior hearing detected him arriving or not. He knew _it_ would be watching him if _it_ did and would presently come to investigate.  
><em>It's her loss, not mine. If she wants to spoil John's Christmas by being a sneak…<em>

He shrugged his shoulders and concentrated on the few remaining miles. Stopping at the last set of red lights, he noticed a shoe glued to a nearby waste-bin with what looked like a large wad of chewing gum. Shaking his head over the ideas some people come up with and probably have the guts to call artistic, he pulled away as the traffic lights turned green.

"Time for me pizzas at last" he remarked as he drove down their street. Pulling up outside the Connor residence, Derek switched off the engine and waited for the usual telltale signs of a curtain being yanked aside and the cyborg's pale face appearing at a window, glaring. At least he could always be sure of the _machine's_ lack of modesty. _It_ would never secretly peer out of a window, hiding behind a curtain. _It_ somehow managed to make looking out of a window resemble the way _it_ entered a room: swinging the door wide open and purposefully standing on the threshold.

Nothing stirred though. The house was dead quiet as was the street. There was a single light on behind one of the upstairs windows in the _machine's_ room.

"Funny" Derek muttered. "Wonder if they've already gone to bed?"

He got out of the SUV and slowly made his way to the gate carrying the presents he had obtained, pausing ever so often in the shadows to listen and scout the perimeter as if he were invading enemy territory.  
>Derek eventually made it unperturbed to the garden shed. Slowly opening the creaking door he made a mental note to get those hinges oiled at last and stepped inside. He slipped John's present snugly behind some tins of paint on a shelf and placed Cameron's under the workbench. Having reassured himself that the item he intended to give Sarah was still where he had left it months before, Derek stealthily withdrew from the shed and lurked in its shadows. He had a stretch of open ground to cover before he reached the front door and deemed it wise to keep a look out for any signs of mechanical movement.<p>

Derek waited for five minutes before he set off unabashed across the snow-covered lawn towards the front door. Nothing had spotted him, apart from an owl, the hoot of which was carried eerily across the garden on the winter night's icy breeze.

Wondering why on earth they had parked the Jeep right next to the porch, Derek climbed the steps and stopped in front of the burglar alarm's keypad. He was just about to enter his code when he noticed it wasn't activated.  
>Drawing his newly chosen gun, Derek pressed himself with his back against the wall to the left of the door, extended his free arm and reached for the door knob. He cautiously turned the knob, then gave the door a stout push and it swung open.<br>_I thought so. It wasn't even locked! What the hell_—_…_

Having switched from a jovial, homecoming Uncle Derek to one of General Connor's best soldiers in the blink of an eye, he entered the house with his back to the walls, pointing his weapon in all directions as he scanned the interior for possible threats. Not daring to switch on any lights, Derek checked the rooms on the ground floor for any signs of John or Sarah or, heck, even the _machine_. Finding no-one, he headed for the stairs, as always keeping to the shadows. Just before he reached the flight, his feet bumped into something large and soft and rather heavy. He instantly stopped dead, fearing the worst. As he looked down he realized that the dark mass lying on the floor in front of him at the foot of the stairs was a coat. John's coat, by the looks of it, and it seemed to be soaking wet, which accounted for its weight.

A tense and rather bewildered Derek stepped over the sodden garment and silently crept up the stairs to the upper rooms, his gun at the ready.

…


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter Three**

"Perhaps she just needs some extra time to reboot?" Sarah suggested after they had completed the arduous task of hoisting Cameron up the stairs and into her room, laying her on her bed. The coat John had placed around her shoulders had finally slipped off in the hall before they had awkwardly climbed the stairs in the dark. She was heavy and their arms had started to ache so they had chosen not to stop to turn on the lights, wanting to get her upstairs as quickly as possible.

"How long did you say it normally takes? 120 seconds?" Sarah asked as she walked back across the room to close the door.

"Yeah, it usually does" John replied quietly, not taking his gaze away from Cameron.

"Hmm…" Sarah covered her mouth with her hand thoughtfully. Cameron had been 'offline' for nearly an hour now and, according to what John had told her, for no apparent reason. It just didn't add up.

They both stood looking at the cyborg lying on the bed. She seemed so much like a sleeping teenage girl, her features perfectly relaxed, her skin so pale and quite unblemished apart from the scar on her brow which had already begun to heal. She looked so full of life, so strong and yet so vulnerable.

"Now I know" John breathed in almost a whisper.

His mother looked at him quizzically. "What do you know?"

"I know that … Cameron is a Botticelli angel."

Sarah opened her mouth to speak but closed it again and merely swallowed as she watched her son sit down on the bed beside the machine and take her dainty hand into his, faintly caressing it with his thumb.

_Don't leave me, Cameron…_

The door flew open and smashed into the wall with a thud, its knob widening the indentation in the plaster Sarah had made earlier and causing bits of wall to spill onto the floor.

Sarah whirled round, her gun instantly drawn, and aimed at the intruder while John jumped up from Cameron's bed with a start, slipped on the bed-side rug and, loosing his footing, fell to the ground with a crash.

"What the bleedin' hell is going on?" a slightly annoyed Derek asked as he and Sarah simultaneously lowered their weapons. "Why wasn't the alarm set?"  
>He looked imploringly from a tense Sarah to the heap on the floor which accounted for his nephew and who was rubbing his elbow wincing.<p>

"You know you should always set the alarm. Look what happened last time when that idiot girl forgot. I don't wanna know what the _machine_ will do if its jacket…" Derek trailed off as he noticed the cyborg lying on the bed.  
>"What the—! It's not <em>asleep<em>, is it?" he inquired incredulously. Then a sudden thought struck him and his eyes immediately lit up, a wide grin appearing on his face.  
>"Did it choke on my pizza or something?"<p>

"Derek!" Sarah warned ominously, advancing on him and instantly causing him to shut up.  
>"Cameron's had an accident" she hissed. "It's lucky I spotted them from the Jeep or we'd have been in trouble."<br>Glaring at him, she jerked her head towards the spot where she remembered her son. "John doesn't know for sure, he says she has shut down or something."

Derek raised his eyebrows in astonishment. "What d'you mean, _shut down_? Those things don't just shut down when they feel like it. They go on forever if they don't get a DU round in their skull. I should know that, Sarah, I had to live with 'em."  
>He shook his head in indignation, upset that his earlier daydream had not quite come true.<br>"And by the way—"

Just as Derek was going to inquire about the whereabouts of his pizzas and Sarah was in two minds as if to punch him in the ribs for being an unfeeling ass, they heard a sound like a muffled sob emanate from the heap on the floor which was currently getting to its feet.

Derek's jaw dropped. Never, in all the years, had he seen General Connor, the sole man who kept everyone going, cry. John Connor had always seemed to radiate strength and determination, for as long as Derek could remember. They had even joked amongst themselves about their General being an emotionless machine without any feelings.

The future saviour of mankind had risen again, trying hard to get a grip on himself, to compose himself and shut out the excruciating pain the nerve ends in his elbow were sending him, it having made its second hard contact with the floor boards today.  
>Having succeeded in mentally isolating his right arm from the rest of his body but only briefly managing to conquer the pain still residing inside him, he swallowed audibly, steeled himself, and then addressed his uncle, who was staring at him in a state of shock, in his best 'John Connor' voice.<p>

"Derek. You said you … lived with them. If you have any idea what could be wrong with her…"

Derek was surprised to hear his former General in his nephew's tone. It somehow reminded him of being reprimanded by General Connor, and sounded as if he had been given a direct order – or a concealed threat. He shook his head to rid himself of the foolish notions.

"Look, when I said I had to live with them, I meant there was _metal_ at base camp. I'm no tech, John, you figured out yourself how to reprogramme those Triple Eights to work for us."  
>He gave his nephew a piercing look. "And her" he added, gesturing at the bed.<br>"What happened to her, anyway?"

John so didn't want to have to recite the story again. Hoping his uncle might come up with an idea, though, he forced himself to relive the experience.  
><em>The day the sun died…<em>

He glanced from Derek to Cameron and back again, sat down next to her on the bed and resumed stroking her hand. Derek's jaw dropped once more.

"We were walking across the common when she suddenly threw her gun at me and insisted I go back home" John told him. "Then she just fell over. Nothing happened. I mean, we weren't attacked or anything. There must be something wrong with her chip…"  
>John's voice trailed off as he remembered what she had said to him.<p>

_I don't want to go…_

He knew she had had no clue as to what had happened to her. She would never voluntarily leave him and was not capable of self-termination, she had told him that. He still had the pocket watch detonator she had given him, safely tucked away in a box in his dresser. Cameron's gift to him. Her life in his hands.

_I don't want to go…_

Her last words reminded him of what she had said to him before he had removed her chip when she had gone bad. He hadn't believed her then…

_Her last words…_

"NO!"

John jumped up from his position on the bed and walked right up to his uncle.  
>"I have to get her back, Derek. I need her. You know she saves my life. And now I have to save hers."<p>

Derek scratched the back of his neck and looked at his nephew with a thoughtful expression.  
>"I suppose she does."<br>He bit his top lip as if in an inner turmoil, trying to force his next words out.  
>"Yeah" he said hoarsely. "I suppose you do."<br>He then shook his head and added apologetically "I'm sorry, John. I've got no idea whatsoever."  
>Turing on the spot, he made his way to the door, still shaking his head.<br>"I need a drink" was all they heard before Derek closed the door behind him, leaving John and Sarah to stare at the immobile cyborg once more.

…

"My nephew's in love with a tin can" Derek muttered to himself, continuing to shake his head while he rummaged in the fridge for the bottles of beer he had placed in there before breakfast. He had spent the last twenty minutes staring out of the kitchen window at the darkness, thinking of how General Connor had fallen for the machine in the future.  
>"Always knew it" he said, nodding knowingly to himself as he withdrew from the fridge clasping two bottles in each hand.<br>Wishing Sarah wouldn't insist on having the fridge on such a low temperature setting, he put down three of the icy bottles on the kitchen table to warm up a little and opened one. Derek enjoyed his beer cooled, but not freezing.

Sighing, he went back upstairs with his bottle to see if their ailing cyborg had made a startling recovery or something. Cursing about cold beer and machines in general, he presently reached the door to Cameron's room and turned the knob.

"Christ, are you tryin' to fry her?" Derek remarked as a wave of heat hit him as soon as he had opened the door.

John and Sarah both scowled at him, the latter with an alarming _I'll fry you in a minute _- expression on her face.

"All right, all right, keep you hair on" Derek said gingerly, taking a few steps back as Sarah slowly advanced menacingly on him. "But why is it boiling hot in here?" he inquired, gesturing at the electric radiators they had set up next to the bed and which were running on full bore.

"We thought it might have been the cold" John informed his uncle, looking up from the vigilant position he had taken up on the bed next to his protector. "Mom remembered what happened to the T-1000 when it was frozen in liquid nitrogen. It was okay again after it had thawed out."

Derek's eyes bulged at seeing the hot water bottles tucked under the edge of a thick woollen blanket now covering the cyborg's body, leaving only its head visible.

"I don't think that'll work, John" he declared, indicating the hot water bottles and the radiators. "They're built to withstand much lower temperatures than we are. You could be frozen stiff and she'd still be functional. A little snow can't have done that to her."

Sarah's fists unclenched, and she turned and stood next to Derek. "I'm damned if I know what happened to her out there" she said, pensively gazing out of one of the windows.

"I dunno. I guess I'm stumped, too" Derek admitted while putting the bottle to his lips and taking a large swig of beer.  
>"Blast it! It's soaking wet" he exclaimed, feeling the water dripping off the bottle on to his shirt. "Damn condensation. That's 'cos you've heated up the place so much."<p>

Sarah rolled her eyes as a grumbling Derek wiped the bottle dry on the sleeve of his jacket and put it to his lips again.

"THAT'S IT!"

The shout made Derek jump and spill his beer down his shirt. He turned around calling everybody all the names under the sun, and mostly so the metal.  
>John had instantly leapt up from the bed and was hurrying over to his uncle, his eyes alight with a fire Derek had not seen in his nephew as yet.<br>"What did you just say, Derek?"

"Err, eh?" a baffled Derek remarked, as he faced his nephew's piercing gaze, a look he recognized. That look would later become known as the 'John Connor glare', capable of making battle hardened soldiers wilt.  
>"I said me bottle's wet, that's all" he mumbled rather sheepishly, hoping John was not referring to the multitude of swear words he had just uttered.<p>

John was still looking at him, now open-mouthed while he recalled his uncle's words.

"Yeah, right. And why did you say it's wet?"

Derek glanced shiftily from side to side, as if trying to find a way to sneak out of the sudden interrogation.  
>"Well, it's the heat, isn't it? The bottle's cold, so there's condensation on it" he explained, trying to remember what on earth he had said apart from his cursing that could have had such an impact on John.<p>

_It must be getting to him…_  
>"Err, perhaps you should try and get some sleep, John" Derek suggested sympathetically.<p>

But John had already rushed off back to the bed and was pacing up and down in front of it.

"Mom, do you think…" he broke off and stopped to look at his mother with the hint of a smile.

Sarah was watching her son thoughtfully, ever so often glancing down at the machine. She had always known that someday it was going to come to this: when her son would put the machine before himself. She had known it ever since she had witnessed the first interaction between them, unbeknownst to the pair. When her son had offered the machine a crisp and she had accepted it with the ghost of a smile. _Machines don't eat crisps_ Sarah had thought at the time, suppressing the urge to turn the petrol hose on to the cyborg and flick a match.  
>She couldn't help herself from thinking that today she would give anything for her son to be able to share a packet of crisps with his cyborg.<p>

Sarah had decided.

She had accepted that Cameron was different, just like her son was different. That was something she had realized as they had lowered Uncle Bob into the molten steel.  
>She also realized that in caring for Cameron, her son had accepted his destiny.<p>

"Mom!"

"What?" Sarah blinked, the present catching up with her, and found herself looking directly into the sparkling eyes of one John Connor, future saviour of mankind, current mission: to restore his protector and confidante to full operation, no matter what.

"Do you think that could be it?"

"John, could you perhaps fill in the blanks for your old Mom?" she grinned at him a little embarrassed. "It's just that I don't really know what you're on about" she turned to Derek for support.

"Yeah, right" Derek added helpfully.

John sighed impatiently.  
>"Condensation. What if that's what's wrong with her? What if her chip's got damp or something from the cold?"<p>

He started to pace up and down again while turning over the possibilities in his mind.  
><em>Chip. Cold. Body heat. Damp. Yeah…<em>

Sarah thought it through.  
>"But John, she was already unconscious—" <em>Dammit<em> "or shut down—" _Whatever_ "before we brought her into the house" she concluded timidly, not wanting to steal the thin line of hope away from her son. It was good to see him smiling again.

"Not possible."

Both Sarah and John turned to face Derek.

"What's not possible?" she asked.

Derek gave them an apologetic sort of gaze before he elaborated.  
>"I'm sorry, John. Her chip can't get wet, it's in an air-tight socket. They can live—" <em>What am I saying<em> "err, function under water without any problems."

John was crestfallen. He instantly remembered the hiss as he had prized open Cameron's port cover before he had removed her chip for her to infiltrate the Artie-system. Derek was right. Of course the chip had to be contained in a water-proof environment. Her flesh alone would suffice to cause damage otherwise.  
>Slowly slouching back to the bed, a beaten John sat down again and covered his face with his hands. He was at his wit's end. And he had been so sure he'd been right.<p>

"There's something I remember!" Sarah suddenly burst out.

John and Derek both whipped round and looked at her expectantly.

"The day Cromartie kidnapped me. When I was in his car I noticed he had some photographs of you and Cameron" she explained, gesturing at her son and the machine.  
>"Cromartie must have seen me looking at her picture because he suddenly maintained she had not been careful and he then asked me if she had damage to her chip."<p>

"Yeah, well, we know her chip was damaged, Mom" John rolled his eyes at her impatiently. "Get to the point."

Reminding herself to teach her son a lesson or two for his cheek sometime, Sarah merely asked him "How was her chip damaged? Do you know that?"

John looked at her in an _are you pulling my leg_ sort of way.  
>"In the explosion, Mom. I think we all know that by now."<p>

Sarah smirked knowingly at her son, somehow relishing in the feeling that she had got one up on him. He had become a little too full of himself lately, she thought.  
>"Oh really, John, do we? I thought, if her chip was damaged physically, there must have been something that caused it. A sealed compartment containing a chip and the chip gets damaged…" she trailed off, waiting for her son to put two and two together.<p>

John's jaw dropped as he stared at his mother. Derek just gaped at the pair of them as if they were rabbiting away in Chinese to one another.

"That means", John continued Sarah's train of thought, "her port must have been damaged as well. The compartment must have been pierced or something. Of course!"

It hadn't occurred to him to inspect Cameron's port at the time, he had been too intent on repairing her chip. But now, being absolutely sure his mother was on to something, John knew what he had to do.

…


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter Four**

The blade of Derek's trusted Stanley knife glinted in the light of the bed-side lamp John had switched on for additional illumination. A screwdriver and a pair of pliers from the toolbox he had asked his uncle to fetch him were lying on the mattress next to the cyborg girl's still form, while John knelt over her and paused as he held the knife to her head. He shuddered and took a deep breath, remembering the last time he'd extracted her chip. Cameron's pleading still echoed in his head.

"She'll be okay, John. You've done this before" Sarah reminded him reassuringly, sensing his trepidation as she saw him hesitate.

"I know, Mom" he slowly gazed up into the concerned face of his mother and offered her a grateful smile, words he had heard a long time ago replaying in his mind.

_It's okay, John. It's not the first time we've done this…_

The sharp blade cut into her scalp with considerable ease. It was as if Cameron was guiding him, telling him exactly where to start the incision, and how far to cut the semi-circle as she had done the first time. He slowly and methodically worked his way through the thin layer of her human-like, yet artificial skin and flesh. After what seemed like ages, John finally removed the knife and flapped back the bloody, sticky piece of scalp, revealing her endoskeleton skull and the cover to her chip-port.

"At least this one's the right size" John muttered to himself, inserting the tip of the screwdriver into the cover's slot. To his surprise, it opened fairly easily this time, without the quiet hiss he remembered and was actually expecting to hear.

"I think you were right, Mom" he said, after he had carefully laid the cap on the pillow beside Cameron's head.

Derek sidled over to Sarah as nonchalantly a possible.  
>"Sarah" he whispered into her ear, not wanting John to overhear. "What if she … well, goes on the blink again?"<p>

With a serious expression, he jerked his head towards the door. Sarah considered him for a moment, guiltily regarding the cyborg and her son, and then nodded.  
><em>I'm sorry, John…<em>

Derek quietly left the room just as John reached for the pliers.

"A half-turn counter-clockwise" John murmured, before he delicately and with utmost care gripped Cameron's chip with the nose of the pliers, turned it and pulled. His hand shaking slightly, he slowly extracted the chip from its socket and held it up in front of him. Taking it from the pliers and laying it almost reverently in his hand, he couldn't help thinking that he was now holding Cameron's life in his hands. Her whole existence, in this single chip. It made him feel physically sick, imagining what it would imply, should the chip be broken.  
><em>She'd be gone forever…<em>

Shuddering and trying to rid himself of these nightmarish thoughts, John cautiously rose to his feet and carried Cameron's chip over to her desk. He switched on the light and sat down on the swivel chair she hardly ever used to examine the remarkable piece of engineering.  
>He had always wondered why humans weren't equipped with a backup heart, it being the most vital of organs; now he wondered why terminators didn't have some sort of backup system for their chip.<br>_Quite remiss of Skynet, actually…_

After a few minutes of having scrutinized the intricate circuitry, barely visible to the human eye, and having paid special attention to the contact pins on one end, John carefully placed the chip on the desk and got up from the chair.

"Well?" a tense Sarah inquired expectantly. "Was there any condensation?"

John walked over to his mother and sighed "Not that I could detect. But it would have evaporated by now again, anyway, I guess. I cleaned the contact pins to make sure, though."

"What?" Sarah exclaimed, looking at her son incredulously. "You can't do that! I mean, can you do that? Is that possible without doing any damage?"

John let out a mirthless snort of laughter "Why shouldn't it be? It's only a chip, after all. Even though it's the most sophisticated one on earth, it's not that much different from tackling my laptop, when it boils down to it."

Sarah responded with an astonished gasp. She hadn't expected her son to speak of his cyborg in such a purely technical, mechanical manner. And it must have shown on her face, for she found John grinning at her.

"What, d'you think I've forgotten that she's a machine?" he chuckled. "I'll never forget that, Mom. It's just that I don't mind that she is."  
>Following his mother's dumbfounded stare at a small spray can standing on the desk next to the chip, he added "And yeah, I used electrical contact cleaner on her."<p>

Sarah shook her head in disbelief as John returned to his position on the bed with a pen light he had taken from the toolbox. Bending over Cameron's head, he shone the thin streak of light into her port, trying to see if he could detect any damage in the terete opening. Or anything that looked remotely out of place, for he had never seen the inside of a terminator's port before. He'd had access on other occasions, of course, but he hadn't had the time to look at Cameron's port last time and he hadn't bothered to look at Uncle Bob's or Cromartie's, nor any of the other Triple Eights' they'd disabled along the way.

In the light of the torch, he thought he could see a small indentation or crack in the wall of the shining silver cylinder right at the bottom where the chip-socket was.  
>"Hmm, I think there's some damage down there, but it's buried pretty deep. I can't see right to the bottom and I don't really know if it's supposed to look like that or not" he muttered.<p>

A sudden idea struck him and he glanced around the room in search of his uncle. Frowning at his absence, he asked "Where's Derek?"

Sarah lowered her gaze to the floor. "He's … gone for backup" she simply said.

"Meaning pizzas" John surmised grinning, before he switched off the torch and placed it next to the port cap on the pillow. He got up and swiftly strode over to the door. As he opened it, a pile of weapons greeted him on the landing. Derek looked like he had stepped out of one of those dreadful horror movies, in which the serial killer mangles odious televisual teenagers, whirling with knives and guns.

"Err, just checking 'em, giving 'em a polish and so on" his uncle mumbled sheepishly from behind his arsenal, fumbling awkwardly with the enormous machine gun in his arms and not quite meeting his nephew's eye.

John considered him suspiciously "U-huh. Looks like it."  
>He had nearly forgotten what he had wanted to ask his uncle, what with the multitude of guns, mini canons, ammunition and something that disconcertingly resembled a flame thrower towering between him and Derek.<br>Gesturing at the pile and looking his uncle directly in the eye, he stated quietly "That's because of Cameron, isn't it?"

"What? No, err, I'm just rearranging…"  
><em>Oh, what's the point…<em>

Derek lowered his Kalashnikov and his faithful pistol, unstrapped the mini cannon from his shoulder and put down the box of thermite and flares he was carrying before he uneasily addressed his nephew.  
>"John, look. It's just a precaution. I mean, you never know, perhaps her shutting down tripped a switch again…"<br>He broke off at the look on his nephew's face. It was an expression of … _understanding_. Derek didn't know what to think, he had been counting on being shouted at and having to listen to John's usual tirade of how totally different the cyborg was and how they didn't understand her at all.

But this time John merely smiled before he calmly said "I know you've had to live with the machines all your life, and that you've seen them kill people you cared about. Heck, one of them even killed my father! But that wasn't Cameron. She's not like them."

He took his gaze away from a speechless Derek and turned to face Cameron's room.  
>"I can understand that you'll never trust them, Derek. You don't have to trust her, but you can trust me. That's all I'm asking."<p>

Derek was taken aback if not to say shocked. His nephew had frankly admitted hat he was okay with him being suspicious of the cyborg's every move. But it hurt him that John seemed to have questioned his loyalty towards him. Every good soldier trusts his general and in turn needs his general to be able to rely on this trust. He hastily went about setting a few things straight.

"I always trusted you, John" he said with a slight huff before adding with utmost conviction "I told you I would die for John Connor. That hasn't changed."

John turned and smiled awkwardly at his uncle "Thanks."  
>Swallowing the lump that had threatened to rise in his throat, John suddenly remembered why he had actually gone to look for his uncle in the first place.<br>"By the way, would you lend me that awesome endoscopic camera you got for your car the other day?"

"Sure. I'll get it" Derek said gruffly, quite relieved at being able to get away from the situation for a few minutes. He nodded to John and left for the garden shed where he kept anything to do with his car, the garage usually being occupied with the metal's Jeep and as such out of bounds to him in his view.

…

"John, it's nearly eleven o'clock and you haven't eaten a thing since the afternoon, are you sure you don't want a pizza?" Sarah asked her son, her mobile phone ready to make a call to the pizza delivery service. Derek had announced that three pizzas would be sufficient for him, judging by the way his stomach was rumbling. And Sarah still wanted to try the _Christmas special_ she had read about in the morning.

Looking up from his laptop he had just set up together with Derek's gooseneck camera, John shook his head. "No thanks, Mom. I've got to get this done, I couldn't eat anything before I haven't finished."

Meaning he would not stop working before he hadn't brought Cameron back. Sarah knew her son that well. She decided she'd order a pizza for him all the same, Derek wouldn't see it go to waste it if John didn't eat it, that was for sure.  
><em>I think I'll get him that broccoli and cheese one. That sounds good…<em>

Derek had left after he had brought John the camera, informing them that he intended to tend to his SUV's wing mirror while they waited for the pizza boy. He hoped he would be able to tape the shattered glass back together, if only perfunctory, at least.

After having placed her order with the pizza service, Sarah's mind wandered to Derek while her son made the final adjustments to the camera, testing it on the neck of Derek's empty beer bottle which he had left standing on the desk. It impressed her how Derek Reese had always had John's best interests at heart. He had probably known it all along that his nephew would not approve of his precautions concerning the cyborg, but he'd still gone along with it all the same. Sarah hoped John hadn't flipped his lid at him.

"John, about Derek" she said uncomfortably. "You know that he only wanted you safe, don't you?"

John looked up from the inside view of a beer bottle on his laptop's screen "Yeah, I know that, Mom. We settled the matter."

Leaving his mother to work out for herself what he meant by that, he got to his feet and carried both laptop and camera, which were connected by a long cable, over to the bed.  
>John was mesmerized by the sight of Cameron lying there. Her skin shimmered like mother o' pearl in the bed-side lamp's light. She had never looked more beautiful, he realized, as he set up the computer on the bed-side table.<br>_I'll need your help with this later, Cam…_

He took hold of the camera and carefully inserted it into Cameron's port, gradually lowering it and making sure all the way that it didn't touch the sides of the cylinder, until the laptop's screen showed the indentation he presumed might be a crack in the wall of her port.  
>Having shifted the lens almost imperceptibly from side to side so as to catch various angles of what now actually did resemble a minute fissure, John finally withdrew it from Cameron's head and placed it next to the laptop. He closed the image recording programme and powered down the machine, shutting its lid with a click.<p>

John reached for the torch on the pillow, switched it on and shone it one last time into Cameron's port in order to reassure himself that everything was fine and dry. Sighing nervously, he switched off the torch, plonked it next to the computer and stood up.

"That's it. I hope you were right, Mom" John said tensely before he headed back to the desk, picked up Cameron's chip and returned to the bed.

Sarah watched on apprehensively as her son bent over the machine, the chip in his hand.  
>"There's something you should know, John" she quietly spoke to the back of his head.<p>

"What's that, Mom?" he asked, pausing from what he was doing and turning to face her.

Sarah looked away uneasily and started to walk around the room.  
>"After you brought her back … she asked me to do something for her."<p>

John waited expectantly for his mother to carry on, his eyes following her as she paced up and down.

"She told me not to let you bring her back, should she ever go bad again."  
>Sarah stopped right in front of her son and held his gaze.<br>"Are you sure about what you're doing, John?"

"Yeah, I'm sure, Mom. She's not gone bad again, she's broken. And I can fix her."

John turned back to Cameron, hesitated for a while, and then carefully inserted her chip into its socket.

…

A brilliant blue glow surrounded the chip as John withdrew his hand and picked up the port cover off the pillow. He fitted the cap into place, reached for the screwdriver and tightened it, hoping against hope that he had done the right thing.  
><em>I don't know what I'll do if<em>—_…_

Something akin to terror took hold of John, causing him to shudder. It dawned on him that even terminators were not immortal, in their own mechanical sort of way, and that Cameron was actually quite as vulnerable as he was. He decided he needed to become more vigilant, less reckless and that he would heed to his family's words in the matter of safety along the path destiny had laid out in front of him, so as to take a weight of Cameron's shoulders. She would fulfil her mission to protect him, even if it resulted in her own termination. Always.  
>And that was something John was never going to allow to happen.<p>

"120 seconds" he remarked, flapping the piece of scalp back down and pressing it gently in its place. He then pulled back a little, dumped the screwdriver next to the torch and busied himself with stroking Cameron's cheek and tucking a few errant strands of hair behind her ear.

Sarah was counting the seconds. John was waiting for the telltale signs of Cameron rebooting, the familiar jerk of her head, and he was not about to shun away from her this time.

60 seconds. Sarah wished the doorbell would ring so she'd have an excuse to leave. On the other hand, she was not prepared to leave her son alone with the machine, just in case.

30 seconds. John was still stroking her hair out of her face.

10 seconds. Sarah found herself wringing her hands in anticipation and forced herself to let her arms drop to her sides. John had bent over Cameron wanting to be the first thing that she saw.

5 seconds. The day's events flashed before John's eyes on fast forward and his stomach started to churn. Sarah clenched her fists so tightly her fingernails dug deeply into her palms.

1 second.

Cameron's head jerked.

Sarah released the breath she had been holding for about half a minute. John was so relieved, he merely smiled serenely down at Cameron, patiently waiting for her to finish rebooting.

Another minute passed. And another. John looked up at his mother, panic etched on his face.  
>"She's not coming round. I must have done something wrong" he cried in dismay.<p>

Feeling a terrible sense of guilt, Sarah watched as her son began to caress the machine's head over the spot where her chip was.  
>"I'm sorry, John. I thought that's what it was. I didn't want to … harm her" she forced out in a constricted tone.<p>

Either John hadn't heard his mother or had chosen to ignore her, for he had taken Cameron's hand into his and was tenderly stroking her palm with his thumb once more. He seemed to be whispering things to the cyborg Sarah was not able to hear.

After having watched her son and the machine for another few minutes, her guilt almost eating her up, Sarah approached him and rested a hand lightly on his shoulder.  
>"John" she said hoarsely. "It's over."<p>

His mother's words hadn't registered with him. He remained in his position on the bed next to Cameron, pulling the blanket back up halfway over her, apparently wanting to keep her safe from the cold.  
><em>Let me raise you up. Please…<em>

"John!"

Sarah's raised voice and her hand shaking his shoulder brought John out of his dazed-like state.  
>"What!" he exclaimed blinking, gazing up at his mother.<p>

She glanced down at her son for a long time, leaving her hand resting on his shoulder. It tore at her heart to see him like this. She could sense his utter devastation and her brain worked furiously, just to say something, _anything_, to boost her son's morale and to ease her own guilty conscience, even if she didn't believe it herself.  
>"We'll try something else, John. I'm sure we'll think of—"<p>

"NO!"

John lunged forward and grasped Cameron firmly by the shoulders.  
>"No! I know that's what's wrong with her, I just know it!" he cried, starting to shake her, the blanket slipping off of her.<p>

The cyborg's body remained limp as John continued to shake her

"You've never backed away from anything before!" he screamed at her. "Now fight! FIGHT!"

He pulled back and slapped both sides of her face again and again, her head lolling from side to side.

"FIGHT!"

Sarah had stepped back, taken by surprise at her son's unexpected outburst, only to witness the door suddenly bursting open and a stack of packed, steaming pizzas making its way into the room, Derek's voice coming out from somewhere behind it.  
>"They made a mistake. Look!" he cried joyfully, as he placed the stack on the desk, a wide grin on his face.<p>

Sarah put a finger to her lips and Derek quirked an eyebrow. It was only then that he noticed that the machine was still lying on the bed and John was leaning over her, shaking her again, albeit very gently this time, before he stopped and resumed his stroking of her hair.  
>Derek's grin instantly faded and they both watched on in awe, as they heard the future saviour of mankind spill his heart out to the lifeless cyborg.<p>

"You said you'd never leave me" John whispered hoarsely. "You said you'd never let anything happen to me. I need you, Cameron, I can't go on without you. I can't face the future alone."

He cupped her cheeks in his hands and bent down over her, his eyes brimming with tears.

"Please come back. I know it wasn't easy and I've been a jerk and pushed you away, but I've fixed that. I'm good now."

He took his hands away from her face and looked into her unblinking eyes, his breath coming out in short gasps.

"I love you! Please! I love you, Cameron, and you love me!"

He bowed his head, placing it into his hands as his body started to shake.

"John?"

Thin, slender arms enveloped a sobbing John Connor and gently eased him down onto the mattress next to her, resting his head upon her shoulder.

"It's okay, John. It's okay. I'm here."

…


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter Five**

"I need a drink" a gagging Derek Reese informed the room at large, making his way to the door, the pizzas instantly having been forgotten.

"I think I'll join you" a relieved and at the same time very shocked Sarah Connor decided, quickly following him and silently closing the door behind her.

Neither John nor Cameron noticed them leaving.

They lay side by side, their attentions focussed exclusively on each other. Even Cameron with her superior hearing seemed to have tuned in solely to her John next to her, who was currently gripping the material of her shirt in a death grip, never wanting to let her go. She watched him scrutinously, studying him as she always seemed to, while she gently and lovingly stroked his head, waiting for his ragged breathing to return to normal and his quiet sobs to subside.

"It's okay, John. I'll never leave you, you know that" she assured him, cupping his cheek in her hand and offering him a small smile.

John lifted his head a little to be able to look at her through his veil of tears.  
>"I thought you were gone forever … when you didn't reboot straight away" he managed to force out with a trembling voice, tightening his grip on her shirt even more.<br>"What happened? Why did it take you so long? I thought 120 seconds…" he trailed of as Cameron's expression turned into something halfway between guilt and remorse.

"I'm sorry, John. I initialized a full system scan" she declared apologetically. "That increases boot time by 300%."

John gazed at her, puzzled.  
>"What? I didn't know you could do that."<p>

Cameron rested her free hand on John's chest above his heart, while her other one was wrapped round his shoulders, holding him firmly to her side. Detecting that his breathing and heart rate had finally returned to normal, she overrode her mission parameter to conceal any information about herself and her programming. She didn't want to lie to her John anymore; she didn't want to betray his trust. Cameron decided to tell him everything he wanted to know, briefly pausing to search her database for the right words.

"It's a diagnostics programme which is normally run automatically while we are in standby. I had it check the integrity of my chip and ran a system-wide test" she explained. Seeing him frown, she added "And no, I didn't know I could do that, either."

John was amazed at her revelation. Apparently the explosion and the damage to her chip had somehow also been beneficial to her development. She was learning. Not only about human emotions, but also about her own abilities. He watched her as she herself seemed a little taken aback by her own words, instantly feeling he had to boost her confidence.

"You know, I think it's a good thing that you've learned to, let's say, adapt your programming for other uses" he tried to reassure her.

Cameron looked away pensively.  
>"We're not supposed to be able to do that, John. I shouldn't be able to override my programming."<p>

"Why not? That's just learning to use what you've got" he affirmed, pleased that she now responded with a small smile and gave him a slight squeeze.  
>"Cameron, can I ask you something?" he added on an afterthought.<p>

"Yes" she nodded, still smiling at him.

"Why did you feel it necessary to run that scan?" he inquired, genuinely curious.

Her demeanour changed to one of utmost seriousness. "I had to see. I needed to be sure."  
>She paused and fixed him with her huge dark eyes before she added in an almost wistful tone "I can't let anything happen to you."<p>

John felt a wave of … _something_ pass through his body, making the hair on his arms stand on end. She needn't have explained; he was sure he already knew the answer to his question. He shifted himself so that he was able to lie on his side facing her. Cameron moved into a similar position opposite him, retracting the arm which had been under him and resting her other one in-between them. John did the same with his arm, his hand lightly brushing against hers.

"And what did you see?" he breathed, their heads mere inches apart.

"I saw everything."

Something exploded inside his brain, making him feel cold and hot at the same time. He knew what she meant, he knew now what she had meant last time. Cameron simply stared at him with an overwhelming expression of innocent expectation, her lips a fraction apart revealing the smallest of glimpses of her gleaming white teeth.

John gulped. The atmosphere was electric. He had wanted it to be special, this seemed like the right time, but he was still unsure if Cameron would reciprocate.  
><em>There's only one way to find out…<em>

Hesitantly, timidly, and yet deliberately, he inched his hand over hers, surprised that she didn't pull it away. He gently started to stroke the back of her hand with his thumb in the tiniest of movements as he looked directly into her eyes, wanting her to know, longing to tell her.

"Cameron, this day has been one of the best days of my life, if not _the_ best" John blurted out awkwardly, feeling a familiar red tinge creep up his cheeks.  
>"Apart from recent events, of course" he added quickly with a tiny grin, the terrible experiences of the past few hours finally becoming a memory.<p>

He moved closer to her, desperate to cross the line, to close that last remaining gap between them and whispered "Everything was just … perfect. I'd like things to stay that way."

Cameron's eyes were fixed on his, as he took in every part of her face, committing every perfect line to memory. His gaze was almost magnetically drawn back to those shining, dark, infinite pools as John finally lost himself in her eyes.

"Everything … begins … and ends … at exactly the right time and place" she breathed, as she slowly brought her lips closer to his.

…

A sharp rap on the door made both of them jump. That intense, yet familiar warmth that had been flooding throughout Cameron's system, making her focus entirely on her John, instantly dispersed, leaving her to feel something she could only describe as loss.  
><em>I will ask John about this later on. He will know…<em>

The perfect moment having been destroyed, John suddenly felt as if he had physically collapsed and had all the wind knocked out of him. He chanced an apologetic glance at Cameron, somehow believing the disturbance to have been his fault. The initial look of disappointment on her face gradually gave way to a small understanding smile and she lightly squeezed his hand.

"Yeah?" John let out with a sigh in the direction of the door, sitting up and feeling as if he were part of one of those dreadful teenage soap operas, in which the would-be couple on the settee is always disturbed at the _right_ time by a conveniently unsuspecting parent bursting into the living room.

Only it was to be his uncle who opened the door a little way and gingerly poked his head through the gap, grinning sheepishly.  
>"Err, sorry folks" he forced out through gritted teeth, now fully opening the door and stepping into the room.<br>"Forgot me pizzas."

With that he strode over to the desk, picked up the pile of now quite cold pizzas and left without another word, pulling the door to with his foot.

Shaking his head and sighing once more, John turned to Cameron who was still lying as unperturbed as ever on the bed next to him, her expression back to her usual blank one.  
>Deep down John couldn't help feeling proud of himself that she apparently only showed her emotions around him. A male's eternal right – <em>or wish<em>.

"Oh well, at least it wasn't Mom" he said glumly, imagining how his mother would have made per presence known by the noise of the door colliding with the wall.

Cameron was also glad the person who had come for the pizzas had been Derek – for the first time in her existence.  
><em>Sarah's custom of entering my room would have agitated John…<em>

Wondering why her HUD hadn't reported Derek Reese's presence behind the door, since she usually could even determine a person's identity by the mere sound of footsteps outside on the drive, Cameron ran a short error check subroutine on her motion detecting receptors which revealed nothing.

Puzzled about the negative result of her error test, she lifted her gaze back to John, who had stretched out next to her again, his head propped up on his elbow. She could tell he was still a little shell-shocked and disappointed, making her deeply regret what she knew she needed to do, the thought of her receptors apparently not having functioned correctly troubling her greatly.  
><em>There must be something wrong with my system the scan did not detect. I could still be a threat to John…<em>

Being preoccupied with her thoughts and monitoring her HUD's data streams, Cameron at first did not notice that John had adopted a different position and had bent over her, his face close to hers once more.

After her initial surprise, the two nanoseconds having lasted for ages for her, she detected the rate of John's breathing to have increased once more.  
>What she was not able to detect, however, was the fact that he was desperately fighting with himself to remain in control of his emotions and trying hard not to continue from where they had been so rudely interrupted moments before.<br>_No, not now. Get a grip on yourself, man. She's not there yet…_

Deciding she would not tell John about her suspicions just yet, so as not to cause him any further discomfort, but later on make it sound as if she needed his help – _That should boost his ego_ –, she deemed it wise to divert the situation from where she was sure it was about to head.  
><em>I'm sorry John. I can't let anything happen to you…<em>

Treating him to rather blank puppy-dog look as she lay unresponsively under him, she addressed him in what she hoped would be a comforting tone.

"John."

"Yeah?" he replied huskily.

"It's time to go."

"G…go? Go where?" he stammered with a frown, somewhat confused.

Cameron offered him an impish smile.  
>"To stop Derek Reese from consuming our pizzas."<p>

After the non sequitur had settled in and he had managed to refocus his attention onto other things apart from Cameron's lips, John realized that he actually hadn't eaten for hours and, feeling his stomach rumble at the thought of a nice hot pizza, had to admit she was right.  
><em>Oh well. The way to a guy's heart is through his stomach, anyway…<em>

"Come on, let's hurry. Derek's a rather fast eater" he grinned at her, getting to his feet and stretching himself.

Cameron gracefully rose from the bed in one fluidic motion, making John blink.  
><em>I'm sure she's got some T-1000 in her…<em>

He cracked his knuckles, briefly inspected his elbow which was still aching from its second encounter with the floor and was just about to head for the door when the touch of slender fingers coming to rest on his arm and probing the protesting joint made him jump slightly.

"You must be more careful in future, John" Cameron said with concern in her voice.

"I will be, I promise" he assured her, surprised that his elbow still ached this time even though she had used her 'thaumaturgic fingers' on him again.

"We'll have to put a bandage on it now" she declared impatiently, before asking rather sternly "How did you manage to hurt yourself again?"

John retreated to the shadows turning a darker shade of red and mumbled "Slipped. On the mat."

He pointed to the ruffled up rug next to her bed and she rolled her eyes at him. Before she succeeded in making him feel like an even bigger nincompoop, he discreetly started to shuffle towards the door. Cameron followed him, keeping her distance until his blushing had subsided. John held the door open for her and she stepped out onto the landing.

"John?"

"Yeah?"

"Merry Christmas."

He hesitated and then frowned, thinking.  
>"It's not until tomorrow, Cameron" he told her, closing the door behind them.<p>

"Now is tomorrow, John. Or has been for three and a half seconds" she explained.

"Eh? Oh, you're right" John admitted, checking his watch. "Midnight already. No wonder I'm hungry. Come on."

They made their way across the landing and down the stairs. John's mind was preoccupied with the smell of pizza wafting up from blow, lingering in the hall, and gradually permeating the entire house.

He halted abruptly at the foot of the stairs and turned to Cameron.  
>"Merry Christmas" he said with a wide smile. "Don't forget to hang up your stocking or Santa won't leave you anything."<p>

Cameron tilted her head, her expression blank.  
>"Stocking? I'm not wearing any stockings, John. And why should Santa leave me something?"<p>

John's mouth flapped open. Letting her words sink in, he closed his mouth and just about managed to refrain from bursting out laughing.  
>Cameron noticed, all the same. She turned away, her lips in a pout and stalked down the hall. John immediately rushed after her.<p>

"Wait, Cameron! I didn't mean … I wasn't laughing at you" he cried, suppressing a chuckle.  
><em>Wow, she really gets pissed off if she thinks you're laughing at her…<em>

She suddenly stopped dead and John crashed into her.

"Err … sorry" he muttered, clutching his shoulder which had collided with her back.  
><em>Ow! It's like walking into a brick wall…<em>

Cameron stared at him with something a little reminiscent of a huff, even though he noticed she was eying the way he rubbed his shoulder in a rather concerned manner.

John shuffled his feet nervously, trying to mimic her usual puppy-dog look and turn it into what he hoped was an apologetic air. "I'm sorry, Cameron. I just never guessed you wouldn't know. We hang up stockings on the mantelpiece and Santa fills them with our presents at night" he explained.

Cameron tilted her head, her features suddenly set in her scary robot expression.  
>John regarded her, surprised at her sudden change of demeanour and somewhat disappointed as to the fact that she had omitted to treat him to his favourite sentence.<p>

"I'm sorry, John. I cannot celebrate Christmas with you" she broke the silence.

"What! Why?" he inquired incredulously.

"I must ensure the safety of the house" she simply said, continuing to baffle John even more.

"Cameron, what do you mean?" he asked wearily, shaking his head at his protector's logic, which was sometimes just a little too abstract for him to follow.

She fixed him with an unmistakably hard stare. "No one enters this house without my prior consent."  
><em>No one threatens my John as long as I'm functional…<em>

John's mouth flapped open again as he finally comprehended.  
>"Um, Cameron, Santa's not a threat. He's Father Christmas. He visits all the houses, climbs down the chimneys and delivers the presents while everybody's asleep."<p>

Cameron tilted her head even more.  
>"But why did we buy presents if Santa will bring them? And our chimney is only large enough for birds, nothing the size of a human is able to descend. I checked on that possible threat when we moved to this house."<p>

_This is too much…_  
>John covered his face with his hands, letting out a groan.<br>"Santa doesn't really exist. It's just a story. A fairy tale, something parents tell their children and which they believe in" he explained, before adding sadly "And it's something I'd have liked to have been able to believe in…"

"Oh. Thank you for explaining."

He smiled at her, at last hearing the words that would always make their way into his heart.  
>Unconsciously, he reached out for her hand and took it into his. Cameron looked down at their joined hands and then up to him again.<p>

"John?"

"Yeah?"

"Why are human emotions so complicated?"

"I dunno. I guess it's part of being human. Or being a CAM" he concluded, grinning at her.  
>"We'll talk about it after dinner, okay? Although I'm not so sure I can answer why we're able to feel warm inside even when it's cold out."<p>

Cameron just stood there, transfixed, for nearly a whole second, which for her was close to an eternity.  
><em>How did he know what I meant…<em>

…


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter Six**

"Funny you not knowing about Santa Claus" John said, as they slowly ambled down the hall hand in hand. "I thought you read the dictionary."

"I do. But it doesn't cross-reference between human domestic habits, such as Christmas, Santa and stockings" Cameron informed him. "Nor do TV shows, even though many of them adopt the Christmas theme."

John stopped them in their tracks outside the kitchen door and looked at her.  
>"Wait a minute. Since when do you watch television?"<p>

"I don't sleep" she simply said with a tiny hint of sadness to her voice.

A disturbing image of a dejected looking Cameron sitting alone in the dark on the living room sofa watching late night TV shows, made John never want to sleep again.  
>Suppressing the strong urge to give her a hug, he settled instead for giving her hand a comforting squeeze before letting go. He reached for the door knob, thinking all along about what it would be like to watch a movie with Cameron, and went through various films in his mind as he opened the door.<br>_Yeah, I'm sure she'd like that one…_

The strong scent of pizza being warmed up in the microwave greeted them. As did a rather queasy looking Sarah Connor who was currently leaning against the sink, a glass of water in her hand and breathing heavily.

"Mom?" John inquired, afraid he was about to witness his mother throwing up.

"Oh, hello John" she forced out gagging, and nodded to Cameron behind him.  
>"I see you're all back in one piece, then. That's good. Everything okay with you?"<p>

Cameron was quite taken aback at Sarah's sudden change of attitude towards her. She even thought she detected a trace of concern in the woman's voice.

"Yes, thank you, Sarah. My systems are operating at 100%" she said, hating herself for having to lie to her John again.  
><em>I hope he will understand…<em>

John rolled his eyes and whispered softly in her ear so his mother wouldn't hear.  
>"Do you have to make it sound so … <em>technical<em>?"

_Oh. Right. I forgot…_  
>"Yes, thank you, Sarah. I'm good."<p>

"Fine" Sarah said feebly, leaning heavily on the sink. As the microwave chimed, she added "Go and have your - _ugh_ - pizzas before they're all gone."

Cameron tilted her head at her and John went up to his mother's side.

"What's wrong, Mom?" he asked worriedly, noticing how she had started to turn green.

"Nothing. It's just that pizza I had. It was foul—"

Cupping her hand over her mouth, Sarah suddenly rushed past them in the direction of the bathroom, leaving them to mop up the remains of the glass of water she had dropped in her haste to leave.

"You shouldn't eat any of them, John. They must have been off" Cameron concluded, and positioned herself between him and the microwave as if the pizza inside were a biohazard capable of harming him at a distance, while she replayed Sarah's hasty retreat and analyzed the facial colour of the fleeing figure.

John had picked up a cloth from the sink to wipe up the spilt water on the floor.  
>"Yeah, I suppose you're right. Shame, I was looking forward to a pizza" he said disappointedly, placing a hand on his growling stomach.<p>

"I can make you pancakes" Cameron offered, as she bent down to pick up the broken shards of shattered glass. She then added rather disdainfully "Unfortunately there are no other alternatives, since Sarah's supplies in the larder only consist of _bisquick_."

Deciding on the spot to end this lackadaisical housekeeping and stock up on a wide variety of healthy foodstuffs, in particular broccoli, she made a mental note to get rid of John's dreadfully sweet _dentist's delight_ breakfast cereals, intending to replace them with family size packs of healthy _no fat, no sugar, no nothing_ muesli instead.

"No thanks, Cameron. I'll just have to wait for tomorrow's succulent turkey" he said with a slurp, thinking of the book they had bought for Sarah and the abundance of scrumptious recipes it contained.  
>"Speaking of turkey, do you think you could wrap up the presents later on? I'm sure you'll be much better at it then me" he asked her as he bent down to wipe the floor.<p>

"Okay" she agreed with something akin to pride before she rose to dispose of the pieces of glass.

Ever so relieved that the fat lady at the shoe shop had wrapped up Cameron's boots for him, he suddenly remembered his mother's attack of the Delhi trots _or whatever_ after having eaten a single pizza and wondered what on earth had become of his uncle should all the pizzas have been off.

Having mopped up the water, he got up and turned to Cameron who had discarded the broken glass in the bin under the sink and had remained standing there, apparently staring out of the above window at the dark sky in an absent-minded sort of way. John couldn't help noticing that something was troubling her.

He had actually intended to go and look for his uncle who was probably in the dining room, but instead he walked up to Cameron, dumped the cloth in the sink and put his arm around her shoulders. He followed her gaze out the window and tried to focus on the sky but it was impossible. The glass only showed their reflections and parts of the kitchen behind them. Nothing was to be distinguished or revealed in the impenetrable blackness outside.

"Humans are so fragile" Cameron quietly stated in almost a whisper, continuing to stare at nothing.

"What makes you say that? Mom feeling sick?" John inquired, curious as to her sudden sombre demeanour.

"Look" she said, lifting her arm and holding out her hand to him. A trickle of blood ran down her palm, seeping out of a small cut right across it.  
>"It punctures so easily. A splinter of glass suffices."<p>

She turned her huge, sad eyes to him.  
>"Your skin. Your body. It is designed to function without aid and yet it is so fragile."<p>

John considered her for a moment before walking over to the built-in broom cupboard.  
>"Humans have learnt to cope with that a long time ago" he told her, rummaging in the cupboard and returning with a sticking plaster in his hand which he laid on the counter.<br>"We use _band aid_" he explained with a grin.  
>Taking her hand into his, he tore a tissue from the roll on the wall just below the window over the sink, wetted it at the tap and wiped the already congealed blood off her palm. Using another tissue to dry her hand, he reached for the plaster, pulled the plastic adhesive covers off it and stuck it gently down over her cut.<p>

Even if it wasn't necessary, even if the cut would be invisible in a few hours time, he knew it was just something he should do to show her he cared for her. Always.  
>"And I think John Connor can live with that as well, now I know you're here to protect me" John breathed, taking her hand up to his lips and planting a gentle kiss near the plaster.<p>

Cameron's eyes glazed over, such was her regret at not having told him about her system malfunctioning, when he was so considerate, so caring towards her.  
><em>I will not lie to you anymore…<em>

"John?"

"Yeah?"

"I need to run a deep scan tonight."

They stood in front of each other, John regarding her rather puzzled, while she deliberately adopted a purely mechanical expression, so as not to let him notice her distress with what she had to tell him. And for fear of his reaction. He was bound to shun away from her, afraid that she might go bad again.

"Okay. What do you want me to do?"

It was just a simple question, showing no trace of fear, no second guessing on his behalf.  
>His calmness unnerved her. She had not expected him to understand, least of all offer his assistance. Her logic told her to berate him for being so obliging, he shouldn't trust her, she was dangerous. But one look into his bright green eyes so full of serenity brought back that warm feeling, rendering her incapable of all logic.<p>

Sensing her hesitation, John gave her hand an encouraging squeeze, prompting her to continue.

"Remember I told you about initiating a voluntary scan?" she asked.

"Yeah. After you rebooted, that was" he confirmed.

"Remember I said the scan is a function which is usually automatically run in standby?"

John nodded, still holding her hand and lightly caressing her palm with his thumb.  
>"I know. And you said you managed to run the scan yourself and that you didn't know you could do that. So you're going to run another one?" he wondered.<p>

"No. I need to let the auto-scan function initialize by itself. I need to compare the results to make sure that those of my voluntary scan do not differ from the original function's deep scan" she explained, using her 'emotionless machine' voice.

"So you need to enter standby?" John realized with an uneasy sense of foreboding, owing to the tone of her voice.

"Yes."

"But I can't help you with that, can I?"

"I have never voluntarily entered standby before…" she timidly said, before breaking off and lowering her gaze to her feet.

He realized at once what she was trying to tell him, what she was asking him for.  
>"Don't worry, Cameron. I'll be right there, I won't leave you."<p>

A shy smile formed on her lips and the relief briefly showed on her face. She just hadn't been able to summon the courage to explain the exact truth to John why she needed to run the scan, but she swore to herself that she would let him know about her suspicions before she entered standby.  
><em>He didn't even ask why. He really trusts me…<em>

"Thank you, John" she breathed, before planting one of her lightning kisses on his right cheek. Turning in a flash, she closed her fingers firmly over his hand and pulled him towards the dining room door.  
>"We need to ascertain the condition of Derek Reese's health."<p>

"Eh? What?" a rather light-headed John managed to utter while stumbling along behind her. He had completely forgotten about his uncle and pizzas and was contemplating about never washing his face again, his right cheek feeling strangely and blissfully numb.

"I distinctly heard a groan from the dining room" Cameron elaborated. "Estimating the number of Derek's total pizza consumption to about five to six pies, and assuming that they were off, Derek will require medical attention after an incubation period of two hours fifteen minutes at most."

…

A close to bacchic scene greeted them as they piled into the dining room. The table was littered with empty pizza cartons, a total of six close to Derek's plate, which was surrounded by empty beer bottles and presented a half eaten salami and mushroom pizza.  
>Derek Reese himself was slumped in his chair, looking a little ill, a thick piece of melted cheese dangling from his mouth.<p>

John couldn't help noticing the fleeting look of disgust on Cameron's face as he sat down opposite his uncle. Cameron remained standing, taking up a vigilant position next to John, as if she intended to protect him from Derek.

"What's wrong with Mom? Was her pizza off?" John inquired, unsure if he'd receive a coherent sentence from his pizza-terminating uncle, since he had as yet not even acknowledged their presence.

Derek slowly lifted his gaze to his nephew, pulled the wad of cheese into his mouth with his tongue and swallowed. The following hic and burp made Cameron's eyes narrow.

"Eh?" Derek mumbled after another belch. "Nah, her pizza was fine. I ate half of it. Your Mom just didn't fancy the _Christmas special_ topping: turkey, pumpkin, sprouts and Yorkshire pud." After a smack of his lips and a final hiccup he added "Not a bad idea. Made a difference to salami, anyway."

Satisfied that neither Sarah nor Derek had been poisoned, Cameron made to leave for the kitchen.  
>"I'll get you the pizza from the microwave, John. I don't suppose Derek will be eating another one" she concluded, glaring at the state of the table.<p>

"Nah. Clear off, I'm full" Derek muttered, resting his hands on his stomach.

John tried hard to suppress a grin.  
>"Why did you order so many? There must have been at least eight" he surmised, counting the empty boxes. "Plus the one in the kitchen…"<p>

Derek grinned, wiping his mouth on his napkin.  
>"Ah, that's what made my day" he announced happily. "The pizza boy made a mistake and doubled our order. He said he couldn't take the excess five back again so he left us 'em free of charge. 'Merry Christmas' he said. Couldn't have given me a better present. I'm sick but happy" he smiled contently, as John doubled up with laughter, imagining his uncle's glee at the prospect of a free feed.<p>

After a few minutes of amicable silence at the table, owing to the fact that Derek had dozed off, the door opened and Cameron emerged from the kitchen carrying a large tray. She gracefully placed a plate with a steaming pizza in front of John together with a knife and fork, a folded napkin and a glass of orange juice.  
>A mischievous grin on her face, she walked round to Derek and held a <em>Half the Weight<em> organic mint wafer under his nose.

Derek opened his eyes and his relaxed expression turned into an immediate one of terror, either because of his _metal_ phobia or because of the chocolate-covered wafer or both.  
>"Look" he informed her, shrinking away from her outstretched arm and suppressing a burp. "I'm absolutely stuffed, I couldn't eat another morsel. Bugger off."<p>

With a triumphant smile, Cameron returned to John and placed the wafer next to his plate. John picked up his cutlery and was just about to cut into his pizza when he noticed its topping.

"Broccoli!" he exclaimed in disgust, looking from Cameron to Derek. "Why?"

Derek let out a snort of laughter. "Because Sarah said to leave that one for you."

"A wise decision" Cameron put in. "Broccoli is rich in dietary fibres and contains a high level of vitamins C and K, the intake of which acts positively towards your health."

She smiled serenely down at John, who glared back at her, not at all pleased at the way her developing humour was heading.

Derek laughed even harder, rocking in his chair.

"Oh yeah?" John pushed the plate over to where Cameron was standing. "You have it, then."

"I shall have the one Sarah left in the microwave. Ham and pineapple sounds interesting."

With that, she left the table and made to head for the kitchen. John grabbed her by the arm and she turned towards him, a faint smile still present on her lips.

"Wait a minute. You said you'd get _me_ the one in the microwave. That must have been the one with ham then if Mom had left me _this_" John concluded, putting two and two together and eying the broccoli and cheese concoction cautiously as if it were to leap off its plate any minute.

"I decided differently" Cameron said with a wink, wriggled out of his grasp and strode towards the door, leaving John to slowly lower his outstretched arm and open and close his mouth in mild indignation.

Derek drummed his fists on the table, roaring with laughter.

Scowling at his quivering uncle, John grabbed his fork and pushed the broccoli over to one side of the pizza, before cutting it in two. He then cut himself a slice from the decontaminated half and shoved it unceremoniously into his mouth.  
><em>Cheese and nothing pizza. Marvellous…<em>

Spluttering and snorting, Derek managed to utter a few words in-between howls of mirth.  
>"You were … right. She … is different. Never got such a … good laugh … from any other tin can."<p>

As if on cue, the door opened and Cameron re-entered the room carrying her plate. Ignoring Derek's refuelled roars, she sat down next to John, who gazed longingly at the steaming ham and pineapple beauty sitting on the table in front of her. With a sigh, he pulled his eyes away from the abundance of sizzling pink and tawny delicacies and dismally turned his attention back to his own gooey-greenish hemicycle.

Cameron picked up her knife and cut her pizza in half. She regarded a sullenly munching away John out of the corner of her eye and smiled slightly as he dejectedly pushed the last segments of his bare half-pizza around the plate.

"Share?" she asked, holding out her plate to him.

John dropped his fork and turned to her, his mouth agape, not believing his ears.  
>"You bet!" he said with glee and greedily snatched up one half of her pizza. He then scraped one half of his own – the one with the broccoli piled on top – onto her plate, and set about wolfing down some real food at last with almost feral hunger.<p>

Cameron watched him fondly until he had finished, teetering on the edge of protector mode due to his haste and lack of chewing, and the fact that humans tend to choke on their food owing to the passage of too bigger pieces close to and sometimes into the windpipe.  
><em>Their vulnerability is mostly brought about by design flaws…<em>

Then, without a word, she slipped the other half of her pizza onto John's now empty plate. He stared at it awestricken, then at Cameron, grinned broadly and immediately tucked in, shovelling large portions into his mouth while mumbling unintelligible words of thanks.

"You require nourishment more than I do" she stated, coming to the conclusion that John must have inherited his eating habits from his father's side of the family, and glared at Derek.

John was sure he'd been close to setting up a new world record in high-speed pizza eating, as he placed his cutlery together, swigged down his orange juice in one go and lent back in his chair with a very satisfied sigh of relief.  
>"You've saved my life again, you know that?"<p>

Treating him to a proud little smile and cutting herself a small, well measured piece of John's now tepid double-broccoli half, she daintily popped it into her mouth and started to chew.

Derek's laughing fit having finally subsided, he watched on in awe as the terminator seemed to be actually eating.  
><em>This is too much…<em>

After Cameron had swallowed her first bite with a small jerk of her head and a somewhat confused blink, and busied herself with cutting another slice, Derek jumped to his feet and headed for the dining room door quite hastily, if somewhat unsteadily owing to his overindulgence, while giving a wide berth to the munching machine.  
>"Guess I should check on Sarah" he muttered, before he closed the door behind him, leaving John and Cameron to share a grin.<p>

…


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter Seven**

"You enjoyed that, didn't you?" John asked, as he and Cameron ambled into the living room after she had finished her pizza to find out if Sarah was feeling any better, and for John to digest his food a little before going to bed. Cameron had insisted.

"Yes, I did. I found the consistency of the dough … interesting and the taste of the broccoli was pleasant" she announced, citing the results her HUD had suggested as the best interpretation of the sensations the food had provided her with.  
>"Thank you for letting me have your broccoli as well" she added innocently, striding off towards the settee under the window and leaving John speechless.<p>

He followed her, shaking his head in amazement.  
><em>How does she know…<em>

The living room was lit only by a small lamp on the sideboard and the light from the television in the far corner which Derek was watching from the reclining comfort of an armchair, his feet up on the coffee table, flicking through the channels at leisure and quietly cursing ever so often when he happened to change to commercials.

They sat down next to each other on the overstuffed sofa piled with cushions. Sarah had draped a Christmassy cover of a rather ugly shade of crimson over the settee, the semi-darkness giving it a disconcerting blood-like appearance.  
>The cosiness of the dimly lit room made John have to stifle the impulse to put his arm around Cameron's shoulders. Even though he was sure she wouldn't object by the way she was looking at him – her dark eyes seemed to glow softly as she gazed at him almost lovingly –, his uncle's presence tended to put the blockers on anything apart from stealing a few furtive glances in her direction.<p>

John was dead tired. It had been a very long day. Wonderful, but long. And terrible, but that was in the past. He longed to go to bed, he wanted to sleep for at least twelve hours. But he knew he couldn't. Not when Cameron needed him. She needed to go into standby and he intended to keep his promise to her.  
>And his mother was bound to wake him at the crack of dawn, crashing into his bedroom and yanking the curtains apart, then yelling at him to help her with the preparation of the turkey.<br>_There's no peace in this house, not even at Christmas…_

"I wonder where Mom is" John mumbled sleepily, leaning a little closer towards Cameron. He desperately wanted to run his fingers through her hair again, to feel its silky smoothness gliding over his hands, to smell the water lilies.  
><em>Her skin feels so soft…<em>

"Hey! Come and look at that!"

Derek's shout brought his nephew out of his daydream-turning-to-dream and distracted Cameron from watching John slowly falling asleep on her shoulder.

John sat bolt upright, glancing around the room, all signs of relaxation having vanished at once. Cameron glared at the back of Derek's head.  
>"I see nothing, Derek" she snapped at him.<p>

John was taken by surprise at the tone of her voice. She really seemed to be angry at his uncle for having woken him. He noticed her left hand had started to twitch, and wondered if she was consciously aware that she was doing it.  
>"It's okay, Cameron" he whispered soothingly in her ear and placed his right hand over her left. The twitching ceased instantly.<p>

Pleased that his touch apparently had such a soothing effect on her, John called to his uncle "What is it, Derek?"

"Come here and see for yourself. She's on TV!" he guffawed.

"What?" John asked in confusion. "Who is?"

He rose from the settee not letting go of Cameron's hand. Pulling her with him, they both hurried over to where his uncle was pointing at the television.

"Wait" Derek said eagerly. "She'll be back again in a minute, I hope."

He had tuned into some spaceship film, the kind with the usual flickering blue lights and a slow moving fan in the background. John watched on, as some out-of-focus guys in rags who were probably supposed to be aliens lumbered about in semi-darkness, obviously due to a poor special effects budget.

"Come on, come on" Derek cried impatiently at the screen.

Suddenly, a small female figure came darting into what seemed to be the ship's cargo hold or large corridor or whatever and began knocking the living daylights out of the reputed bad guys. Down they went, one after the other, until a young man came in and went over to the girl, putting a blanket and his arm around her.

"There you are." Derek exclaimed, and turned to Cameron. "Could be your double."

Apart from being able to take on an army single-handed, the close-up of the girl's face revealed that she actually did bear a striking resemblance to the cyborg, if it hadn't been for the dark rings under the girl's eyes. She was even as pale as Cameron, John noticed.

"She looks just like Alison…" Derek remarked darkly, changing channels.

"No, wait!" John shouted. "I wanted to see who she is. Go back!" he commanded, not noticing Cameron stiffen next to him.

Derek spluttered in indignation. "What? I'm not sitting through that crap when there's wrestling on somewhere." He continued to flick through the channels.  
>"There!" he announced happily, leaning back in his chair after finally having arrived at the channel of his choice. Obviously, watching two great oafs knocking each other about in the ring was Derek's idea of evening entertainment.<p>

"Now be quiet" he said irritably, his eyes glued to the screen, where a huge black guy was currently walloping away merrily at some scrawny pale bloke half his size. Such was Derek's preoccupation with the rather incommensurate fight, he never noticed his nephew appearing at his side next to the armchair. Snatching the remote control out of his uncle's hand, John flicked backwards trying to find the channel with that space film.

"What d'you think you're playing at?" Derek roared, lunging for the remote, while John jumped back out of his reach. "Give it here. I wanted to watch that" he declared sourly.  
>"I'm waiting for 'Crunch 'em up' McCabe…"<p>

John continued to run backwards through the channels but he couldn't find the film again. _Probably a commercial break as usual_, he supposed.

"Dammit, Derek. I wanted to know who that actress was."  
>He sighed "Now we'll never find out."<p>

Remembering something Derek had said, he asked "Who did you say she looks like?"

Derek opened his mouth to speak when Cameron suddenly stormed towards him stopping inches from his chair, a most deadly expression on her face. He instantly recoiled, instinctively reaching for the gun in his waistband which wasn't there. Remembering he had taken it out at the table before he had unfastened his belt buckle to let his trousers accommodate for his pizzas, he scowled and decided there and then to go on a diet.

"She could be a threat" Cameron stated icily. "Skynet could have sent her to get close to John."

"Cameron" John placed his hand on her arm trying to calm her down. "She's only an actress, and that film looked old. I don't think—"

She cut across him, shaking his arm off vehemently without actually intending to. John was quite taken aback by her sudden unaccounted ferocity.

"She could be Skynet" Cameron was adamant. "It would not be the first time that Skynet tried to get close to you."  
>Turning her head away from John, she added in a tiny voice "Through me."<p>

"What?" John exclaimed, utterly shocked. "What do you mean? You were sent to protect me."

"Yes. I was. That was after I was reprogrammed. By you. My original mission was to terminate you, John."

It took a while for that to sink in. This couldn't be true. She couldn't have wanted to kill him. Not his Cameron. John remembered the kindness in her eyes, the loving glances, the tender touches, her smiles. But he also remembered the day she _had_ tried to kill him.

_Sometimes they go bad. No one knows why…_

He remembered the confusion and regret briefly present on her face as she had aimed her gun at him in their old house, just before the fire had engulfed the stairs, causing the landing to collapse with Cameron on it, and allowing him and Sarah to escape.

_Someday one of these things is gonna kill you…_

He remembered reinserting her chip and trusting her.

_It's not gonna be this one…_

…

Cameron had stomped back to the settee and sat down again looking really upset. She had decided not to lie to her John anymore. She would tell him everything. She deemed it best that he knew the truth about her, about her origins, about her … murder. Even if that meant that he would almost certainly distance himself from her, that their lives would return to how they had been before, that John would start pushing her away again.

It had all been too good to be true. Being with her John was something that was just never supposed to be. She was too dangerous.  
>But he was her whole existence, without him she had no purpose.<br>_I can't let anything happen to you…_

Uncontrollably, she started to sob. Tears welled up in her eyes and spilled down her cheeks.  
>Her whole body shook with a grief so pronounced, no programming could possibly have replicated.<p>

Derek forgot all about his wrestling match and just stared.

John glared at his uncle and shoved the remote into his outstretched hand. Turning around, he slowly walked over to the settee, a calculating look on his face.

_What she said back there … everything she said, it was a trick…_

_They carry death with them…_

_You needed to get close to me. It's just the way you're … programmed…_

_I love you John and you love me…_

Words from long ago echoed in his mind as he sat down next to the cyborg on the thick upholstery.  
>His brain was working on overdrive, trying to put all the pieces of the puzzle together, trying to make sense of what she had just said. Something he had asked himself long ago returned from the furthest recesses of his mind. Something he had forgotten, not thought about since he had met her on that long gone summer's day at school. And then something else came to him, as he recalled the day Cameron had glitched and had thought she was this human girl.<br>_Alison! Alison from Palmdale! It all ads up…_

John took in her appearance. She was sitting next to him, perched on the edge of the sofa, her hands resting in her lap. Her body shook with sobs, while she stared blankly, almost mechanically at the bay windows of the alcove on the opposite side of the room, her eyes wide open, tears leaking out of them.

"Cameron" John said softly, reaching out and taking her hand into his.  
>"It doesn't matter to me what happened in the future."<p>

He squeezed her hand, hoping it would comfort her, but she continued to sob.  
>Her quaking bottom lip tore at John's heart. If only they had been alone in the room, he would have hugged her, told her that everything was okay, that she was beautiful and that he … loved her.<p>

"I think I know now who this Alison was" he said quietly, making sure his uncle couldn't overhear. Removing his hand from hers, he mimicked her posture on the edge of the sofa and stared straight ahead at the back of the couch which stood in the alcove facing its windows.

Cameron's body stiffened, her left hand started to twitch again.

"I always wondered why it had been you" John continued, not looking at her.  
>"Did he … did I send you back because you look like her? So you could get close to me? So I wouldn't be … afraid of you?"<p>

Cameron sniffed a few more times and turned her head to face him, just as he chose to glance at her as well. It surprised her that John was gazing at her so softly, again without any trace of anger or resentment. She swallowed in a very human fashion, then wiped her nose with her free hand, making John grin. He reached into his pocket and withdrew a paper serviette, one he had taken from MacDonalds in the afternoon, and handed it to her. She dried her cheeks, wiped her nose and gave him a still very tearful puppy-dog look.

"I don't know, John" she said with a final sniff. "That part of my memory has been erased. You erased it when you reprogrammed me."

John considered her for a moment.  
>"But … what about Alison from Palmdale? I mean, when you thought you were her? You still have those memories."<p>

Cameron tilted her head in confusion.  
>"Yes. I do. Some of them. I don't know why."<p>

John took a deep breath. The question he was yearning to ask was on his lips before he had realized it.  
>"Cameron, was Alison … my girlfriend … or my wife in the future?"<p>

Cameron opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out. Instead, a look of terror formed on her face.

"I don't know, John. I swear, I really don't. I want to tell you, but I … I can't … I don't know—"  
>She broke off trembling, her left hand convulsively contracting into a fist and opening again.<p>

Instinctively, and as if it were something he had always done, John put his arm around her, oblivious to the strangled cry of horror coming from the direction of the television.

"It's okay, Cameron. If you can't tell me, that's okay" he said gently, realizing that she obviously just couldn't tell him some things, even if she intended to. He wanted her to know, wanted to reassure her that he did not hold it against her.  
><em> Jeez, they might have firewalled her or something…<em>

He knew he had to tread very carefully, so as not to cause her any more grief. The Alison subject seemed to really have shaken Cameron to the core of her chip. He knew there must be more to Cameron's past concerning this girl, than she had let on. John decided to wait until the time was right to breach the subject, to find out if their pasts were linked somehow. He knew she would tell him if she could. He knew she wouldn't lie to him anymore. He trusted her.

John gave her shoulder a squeeze and lightly caressed it with his thumb. She relaxed a little and turned her sad eyes on him. Shifting his position slightly, he reached across with his left arm and lightly placed his hand over her balled fist. He could feel the immense power of the pistons and servos causing her fist to clench and unclench, he sensed them surrender to his touch, their errant behaviour ceasing.

An arm capable of decapitating him with one blow relaxed. A hand which could puncture his flesh and casually reach inside him to close around his heart extracted itself from under his, only to hesitantly place itself on top, its thumb tenderly caressing his palm.

This time, the indignant spluttering from the armchair in front of the telly did not pass unnoticed, but John didn't give a damn anymore what anybody thought. He was sick and tired of the accusing glares from either his mother or Derek every time they saw him and Cameron merely occupying the same room. He decided that there were things he needed to change, things he needed to get sorted out, once and for all. But now was not the time.  
>All that mattered right now was sitting next to him looking sad and forlorn. He intended to change that first of all, at any cost. Cameron was precious to him, as was her happiness.<p>

"Why are you doing this, John?" she asked with a small tilt of her head.

"Doing what?" John murmured, holding her closer go him, so that their sides were almost pressed together.

She glanced down at their touching thighs.  
>"Why do you continue to trust me even though I may be a threat to you?"<p>

John breathed a sigh and squeezed her again. "I dunno. You tell me. Maybe it's because I tend to do stupid things."

Perking up a little, she treated him to a tiny smile. To John, it was like the first ray of sunlight after a rainy day.

"Yes. You do stupid things, John. It would help me to understand why…"

"Humans do stupid things" he explained, recalling a conversation they had had long ago and remembering the hurt in her eyes after what he had said to her.  
>He leaned in towards her, his voice a mere whisper.<br>"We try and make each other happy. Sometimes that's stupid, but it's also being human."

Cameron's hand tightened around his as she tilted her head back, gazing into his eyes.  
>"What would humans do now?" she breathed.<p>

_What would future John do now…_

_The future is now…_  
>Such was the last coherent thought John was capable of, as he reached up and gently placed his hand on the back of Cameron's neck under her curtain of silky hair, taking in the faint smell of water lilies emanating from the beautiful cyborg a fraction of an inch before him.<p>

Neither of them noticed the dark shape rising from the couch in the alcove.

…


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter Eight**

"WHAT IS GOING ON IN HERE?"

The bellowing roar made John and Cameron literally tip off the edge of the sofa.  
>Immediately positioning herself so that she was underneath him to cushion his fall, she landed on her back with a thud, John sprawling face down on top of her.<br>"Ow!" he groaned, as their foreheads collided with a crack.

Cameron rolled her eyes.  
><em>So much for cushioning his fall…<em>

"Are you okay, John?"  
>She reached up and cupped his cheek in one hand, using her other to briefly probe his forehead and assure herself that he had not been damaged.<p>

"Yeah, I'm good. Never mind that" he grumbled irritably as he lifted his body off of Cameron and got to his feet to glare daggers at the tall, dark stranger responsible for nearly giving him a heart attack.

"Do you have to keep doing that, Mom?" he demanded in exasperation. "Can't you just address someone normally instead of scaring the living daylights out of people?"

Sarah's face paled. Her eyes bulging, she slowly advanced on her son, who immediately retreated a few steps, his boldness evaporating into thin air.

"Don't tell me what I should and shouldn't do, John Connor" she hissed ominously.

Her words contained such foreboding, that the room remained silent, all apart from one of its occupants, that was.

"Oh dear" Derek exclaimed, cringing behind his chair. "I'd forgotten she'd gone to kip on the couch."

Having reached her quavering son, Sarah faced him, trembling with rage.  
>"What is the meaning of this?" she spat with pure venom, gesturing between him and the cyborg and the sofa.<p>

Cameron had positioned herself next to her charge, donning her scary robot face and monitoring the interaction between mother and son. She decided she would step in at the first signs of the situation getting out of control and was soon literally left to face the music, owing to the fact that John had started to cower behind her, hoping to escape his mother's fury.

"M…Mom…" he stammered, clinging to the back of Cameron's tank top.  
>"W…we just, err, I didn't think…"<p>

Sarah sneered.

"Obviously you didn't think. Or you wouldn't have been making yourselves cosy on my Christmas settee. Look at the state of the throw! I especially ironed it today."

John merely gaped at his mother. He had been expecting to receive the full extent of Sarah Connor's wrath for becoming romantically entangled with his protector, or, to put it bluntly, nearly getting caught snogging a cyborg on the sofa.

Apparently, Cameron had been thinking along the same lines, because she had automatically removed John's hand off the back of her shirt and straightened the fabric out, covering her bare midsection.

Sarah sidestepped Cameron and gave her son a playful but firm punch in the ribs, causing him to stumble backwards onto said settee.  
>"And speaking of getting cosy…" she continued, her lips so thin, her face bore a slight reptilian expression. "It's nice to see you two are both <em>back to normal<em>."  
>Placing an unnerving emphasis on her last three words, Sarah glared between John and Cameron.<p>

"Err, Mom, we, um, ah …" John spluttered, going slightly red, and causing Cameron to roll her eyes at his feeble attempt of de-escalating a situation.

Deciding it was now time that she intervened in order to spare John from having to tax his skills of eloquence any further, Cameron put on an indifferent blank face and took a step towards Sarah.  
>"I'm sorry we ruined your sofa throw, Sarah. I will iron it for you in the morning, since it's too late now" she said in her mechanical reciting voice. "We were just going to bed. The circadian rhythm of teenagers is abnormal and therefore John needs his sleep."<p>

Derek, who up until now had kept to himself behind his chair, uttered a derisive snort.  
>"We? What d'you mean, <em>we<em>? Don't tell me you sleep now as well!" he exclaimed, thinking with disgust of the machine's earlier meal.

Cameron was neither about to reveal to Derek her plan to enter standby, nor to let on that she had asked John to stay with her while she was at her most vulnerable.  
><em>I should not require John's presence, but it feels … comforting…<em>

If it had not been for an irate Sarah Connor, she might have told Derek that she was going to tuck John in, just to get his blood pressure up.

"No. I don't sleep. But I need to ensure that John's sleeping patterns are regular and sufficient."

"Meaning you intend to tuck my son in" Sarah concluded, her top lip curling.

_How does she know…_  
>Remembering John had once told her that humans were, to a certain degree, capable of premonition in terms of what he described to her as <em>having hunches<em>, Cameron decided to read up on the subject whenever she found the time, thinking it might help her to understand some of the more complex and illogical facets of human behaviour.

"If it helps him to sleep better, yes" Cameron deadpanned.

Sarah's face fell. She immediately turned to her son who was dreamily gazing at the cyborg with open-mouthed amazement and adoration, obviously imagining what it would be like to be tucked in by her.

"John, we need to talk" Sarah said, taking a step towards him and purposely obscuring his view of the machine.

John blinked and shook his head to clear his mind.  
>"What? Err, fine, so talk" he nodded to his mother, wondering what on earth she could want from him, when he had other, more important and significant matters to deal with right now.<br>_Like going into standby with Cameron. I mean … oh whatever…_

"Alone" Sarah commanded, glaring at Cameron who got the hint and instantly turned to leave. John could literally read the disappointment and hurt in her blank stare as she slowly started to slouch away. He reached out and grabbed her by the arm. Cameron stopped and turned, wearing a puzzled expression, and glanced between him and Sarah.

John shook his head at his mother.  
>"No" he said quietly, yet with an undertone of determination.<p>

"I beg your pardon?" Sarah demanded as if she had been affronted, yet unconsciously steeling herself.  
>She had noticed the firm, resolute look on her son's face, a look she would in time get to know as the 'John Connor has spoken' expression.<p>

"No" John repeated darkly.  
>"What you have to say in front of me can be said in front of Cameron. Talking to me is like talking to her."<p>

He folded his arms over his chest to underline his 'John Connor' look and took up a defiant position next to Cameron which uncannily reminded Sarah of the day he had reinserted her chip and had stood next to her after helping her out of her death bed truck.

Both Sarah and Cameron gaped at him, the former in shock and indignation, the latter in surprise and amazement before the three of them jumped as they heard a cry.

"It was you!"

…

Derek had got to his feet and was staring unbelievingly at his nephew, the remote control slipping from his fingers and crashing to the floor, its batteries rolling over the carpet.

"It was you all along" he said, running his hand through his hair, as if he had just had a revelation about something that had been gnawing away at him for years.

"Me?" John inquired, frowning. "What was me all along?"

"If you're accusing my son…" Sarah warned dangerously, taking a step towards Derek.

Unimpressed, Derek ignored her and stared at the cyborg instead.  
>"I always thought it was you" he said wide-eyed. "We all did."<p>

"Can somebody please tell me what on earth he's talking about?" Sarah demanded.

Derek walked over to them, the colour draining from his face.  
>"She said that" he informed them, gesturing at Cameron and leaning heavily on the back of the sofa as if he needed support. Sarah frowned as her prize throw became all scrunched up again.<p>

"She said what?" Sarah inquired impatiently and squared up to Derek, her arms folded over her chest in a very John Connor-ish fashion.

"In the future", Derek explained breathlessly, "she said exactly the same thing to Jesse. 'Talking to me is like talking to John'. Jesse told me after the sub went down. We all thought she had taken him over."

He turned to Cameron and looked at her intently as if seeing her for the first time.  
>"You got that from him, didn't you?"<p>

Sarah glanced from Derek to Cameron and back again.  
>"What do you mean, <em>got that from him<em>? She wasn't always there in the future, Derek. She couldn't have picked it up from John. Because she'd have to have heard it today to be able to know but that would mean…"

She trailed off as her brain froze up at the prospect of another paradox.  
>"No, that can't be. She only showed up in 2027…"<p>

Derek ignored Sarah's confused monologue and continued to stare at the cyborg, while reliving situations long dealt with and set aside as memories.

"If it wasn't because of you", he slowly pondered, "then why did the General stop talking to us? Why did he distance himself from the people who believed in him?"

It wasn't a direct question, it was more like something Derek was asking himself. Something he was racking his brain about to comprehend.  
>Cameron actually deflated and shifted her gaze to her feet. The fingers of her left hand clenched into a fist as she subconsciously stepped behind John.<p>

"Derek, stop it" John insisted, noticing his protector's troubled demeanour. "Can't you see she's had enough?"

Cameron stepped out from behind him and smiled weakly, relaxing as John took her by the hand. "It's okay, John. It's only fair Derek should know."

She looked down at her hand in his and gave his fingers a light squeeze. "I want you to know this, too."

Derek's eyes nearly left their sockets as the cyborg studied him with an almost apologetic look. Sarah seemed more confused then ever, still trying to work out the missing link between 2008 and 2027.

"In a way, it was my fault, Derek. And no, I didn't learn it from this John." She turned to the boy next to her with a fond smile.  
>"I learnt it from General Connor. He confided in me and asked me to operate as his front man. He never told me why and I didn't understand why at the time, but I know now. He didn't want anyone else to die because of him. Ever again."<p>

She turned to gaze softly at Sarah.  
>"After Alison Young was captured and Sergeant Kyle Reese was sent back to protect you, John must have decided never to confide in anybody again. This is just an assumption. I was built to infiltrate the resistance, Sarah. I was built to terminate General John Connor. The trust he put in people is the reason why they follow him but it is also his one great weakness. Skynet used John's trust to its advantage by building me. By capturing Alison Young and creating me, Skynet almost succeeded in achieving its goal. But then again, it was also John Connor's trust that saved his life."<p>

Cameron gave John's hand another squeeze before adding "And mine."

Sarah forced herself out of her dazed state at learning things her own son had done or was to do in the future. It also unnerved her hearing Cameron actually open up to anyone. Anyone apart from her son, that was.  
>"How was that?" she inquired apprehensively. "How come his trust saved your life?"<p>

Cameron suddenly reverted to her blank emotionless gaze as she looked away from them all.

"Because he hesitated. After I had infiltrated base camp—" she turned to Derek as if she had remembered something.  
>"Those bracelets weren't a good idea. Skynet eventually guessed their purpose."<p>

Derek opened his mouth to say something but words failed him. All he was able do was offer the cyborg a dazed nod of his head. A baffled Sarah looked at her son for an explanation but John merely shook his head and shrugged before he sat down on the settee again.

Abruptly facing Sarah once more, and causing her to jump, Cameron continued.  
>"After I had infiltrated base camp and found my primary target, he didn't terminate me. He saw through me at once but he just lowered his weapon."<p>

"Wait a minute" John put in from behind. "I thought you said I erased your memory."

Turning to John and regarding him almost sadly for a moment, Cameron searched her HUD for the right words.  
>"You did. These are things you told me. I believed you, you never lied to me. You said I considered you for a moment, and then also lowered my weapon."<p>

John listened in awe as Cameron recited what he had told her in the future. He wondered if it had all occurred before, if he would become Future John, if the future was inevitable, even though so many things had happened to alter it. Like Cameron being here.

_Are you here to kill me, John?…_

_Are you here to kill me?…_

_No…_

He had known she was telling the truth. He knew his future self must also have known.

_Promise?…_

_Promise…_

Cameron smiled fondly at him, a far away look on her face.  
>"You said I tilted my head as you lowered your weapon. I don't know why you told me that."<p>

John grinned to himself, imagining a terminator considering its prey and tilting its head as if contemplating about the necessity to kill.  
><em>I guess I know why he said that. He must have loved it when she did that, too…<em>

Sarah felt like clipping her son round the ears for being a complete fool in the future.  
><em>Trusting a terminator indeed. Where did I go wrong…<em>  
>But then she saw the way the cyborg was gazing at her son with what she could only describe as adoration. There was no way Sarah could deny that Cameron was different, no way she could deny that she had decided to accept her son's choice.<p>

"Fine" she concluded briskly. "So you trusted each other – for reasons beyond my comprehension. And what happened then? How come you let him reprogramme you?"

"I don't know, Sarah. He never told me about that. After he reprogrammed me I stayed with him" Cameron disclosed timidly.

Sarah's eyes narrowed. A sharp intake of breath indicated that Derek was thinking along the same lines, as was John, whose cheeks had started to show a red tinge creeping up on them.

"Stayed with him?" Sarah repeated ominously. "What do you mean, _stayed with him_? I thought you said you were his front man, not some kind of frontwoman."

She glared at Derek who shrank back under her piercing stare, recalling their recent discussion about Cameron and Future John in Derek's car.  
><em>Oh Christ! She's gonna have me on that…<em>

Cameron had obviously got the message, for she lifted her head in a huff and stood to her full height.  
>"Being John Connor is lonely, Sarah. And was. I stayed with him because he asked me to. We trusted each other. He confided in me and I offered my advice as best as I could. That was all. We were friends, not intimately or as boyfriend and girlfriend as we are now."<p>

John turned crimson to match the sofa throw and squirmed in his seat, hoping he could somehow blend in with the surroundings and become indistinguishable from them, chameleon-like.

Derek's jaw dropped and he staggered backwards, feeling quite faint.  
>"I need a drink" he declared predictably and trudged off towards the kitchen, not bothering to close the door behind him.<p>

Sarah did not explode, nor did she show any other signs of emotional discomfort, which must have involved quite an effort on her behalf. She turned towards the sofa and addressed her bright red son conversationally, indicating between him and Cameron.  
>"How long has this been going on for?"<p>

"Um … ah … Mom … I … err ... we…"

"So much for the future leader of mankind" Sarah sighed, leaving her son to melt into the sofa.

She approached the cyborg who had been watching their interaction with mild fascination, while the chinking of bottles was to be heard coming from the kitchen.

"Well?" Sarah demanded with the air of a mother catching her teenage daughter with some bloke on the doorstep.  
>"Perhaps you can tell me what this is all about, since my son seems to be occupied with practicing his camouflaging techniques."<p>

Cameron tilted her head.

Turning an even deeper shade of red, John wished he had never agreed to go downstairs and eat any pizzas in the first place. He could have been far away from it all, lying safe and sound in his bed without a care in the world. Like those children in the street.  
><em>Wake up, John. Nowhere is safe…<em>

Reality caught up with him in the shape of his uncle slowly stumbling past the door to the hall, obviously heading for his bed, a six-pack of beer quietly tinkling like jingle bells at his side.

"I guess that's the last we'll see of Derek for the day" John concluded, his blushing subsiding as he suppressed a yawn, the day's strenuous events eventually having caught up with him.  
><em>Some Christmas this has turned out to be…<em>

Sarah at once noticed her son's stifled yawn. Sparing an actually quite bashful looking Cameron an answer, she shook her head and gave the cyborg a regal wave.  
>"Never mind. Off to bed with you two, it's late. And I'll be needing help with that turkey tomorrow morning."<p>

Something briefly showed up on Cameron's face that reminded John of a relieved and thankful smile, before she tilted her head once more and looked blankly at his mother.  
>"I don't sleep."<p>

"Whatever. Then make sure that my son gets some sleep, at least" Sarah said after an initial twitch and a pinch of her nose.  
><em>She's a machine, she's a machine…<em>

"I swear."

Cameron immediately turned and stood facing John's sofa with a dangerous 'you heard what your mother said' kind of look.

"Okay, okay, I'm coming" John grumbled, slowly rising from the sofa, stretching himself and yawning ostentatiously.

Cameron reached for his hand, took it in an unyielding grip and dragged John steadily towards the door, while he stumbled along behind her, spluttering indignantly.

Sarah had to stifle a grin.  
>"Just a minute" she called to them.<p>

Cameron halted abruptly and John bumped into her, cursing.  
>They both turned around, as if on cue and awaiting her orders.<p>

"How come you never called anyone when Cameron … err, shut down? Don't tell me you'd left your mobile at home again" Sarah addressed her son, her arms on her hips and her left foot tapping the floor.

John blanched with dread. He had completely forgotten about his mobile.  
>"Err … no. I … um, chucked it away."<p>

Sarah did a double take. "You what!"

"Yeah, well, it didn't work, see? It was probably empty and—"

"You're a fool, John" she cut him off. "What if someone finds it? It could lead them to us, do you know that?"

She had slowly advanced on him like a lioness ready to strike. John instinctively moved behind Cameron.

"Mom, I … err, I didn't think…" he broke off feeling like a complete ass.

"That", Sarah snapped, folding her arms and towering over them, "is again obvious. You do know that we will have to go and find your mobile tomorrow?"

"Yeah…" John admitted in a tiny voice, nodding feebly.

Seeing her usually rebellious son cowering behind his cyborg, all signs of precociousness lost, eventually took the wind out of Sarah's sails. After a snort of laughter, she shook her head with a sigh and smiled wearily.

"Wait here" she told them and headed for a wardrobe on the other side of the room.  
>She returned with two light brown objects dangling from her outstretched hand, their texture resembling the kind of sacks Indian rice is sometimes sold in. Only these ones had bits of coloured felt glued to them in the shape of reindeers and fir trees. And they looked like oversized socks.<p>

Grinning, Sarah shoved them into Cameron's hand.  
>"Now get to bed. And don't forget to hang up your stockings."<p>

…


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter Nine**

"I wonder when she got those" John remarked as he and Cameron climbed the stairs after they had fastened their stockings to the mantelpiece, hanging them on the fire-irons' hooks.  
>"She couldn't have bought them today…"<p>

"The items in that wardrobe belonged to the previous owners of the house and were left behind" Cameron informed him.  
>"Though it is strange how the stockings appeared in there again, since I wrongly identified them as waste and discarded them amongst other things shortly after we moved in."<p>

"Hmm…" John pondered thoughtfully. "I wonder if Mom took them out of the dustbin again."

They reached the landing and John flicked the light switch. Nothing happened.  
>"Bulb's gone" he said, groping about in the near darkness, his eyes slowly adjusting to the dim light coming from the single window at the end of the corridor.<p>

A sudden flash of lightning briefly illuminated their surroundings, the bare branches of the tree right outside the window casting eerie shadows on the walls. The wind picked up and whipped at the tree, causing its nearest branches to scratch at the glass. Like claws, searching for a way to get in.

Cameron tensed. "There's a storm coming."

"Let's hope it's not a snow storm. I've sort of gone off snow for the time being" John pointed out, taking hold of her hand and giving it a squeeze.

He opened the door to her room and they stepped inside. A strange musty smell greeted them, pungent and sour like a dead cat.  
>Cameron grabbed John and yanked him behind herself, reaching for the light switch.<br>"Get back, John."

Cold bright light flooded the room as Cameron braced herself for the intruder, her stoic robot mask in place, her John safely guarded by her body.

She scanned the entire room. There was nobody there. Releasing her firm grip on John, she walked over to the window, checking behind the curtains and bent down to look under the bed.  
>A shiver ran down John's spine as he recalled long forgotten stories about the shadowman, who lives under children's beds and only emerges at night.<br>He wondered why she had bothered to check the curtains and bed, since he knew she was able to scan her surroundings using various techniques such as infrared.

Assuring herself that the coast was clear, Cameron returned to John who was looking at her with a puzzled expression.

"T-800" she informed him. "The synthetic flesh of the earlier models did not have the correct healing properties. When damaged, it decomposed. The odour was unpleasant."

John nodded, went over to the desk and picked up something off the swivel chair. It was the still soaking coat which had dropped off Cameron before he and his mother had hauled her up the stairs. Somebody, probably Sarah, John thought, had hung it over the chair to dry, seeing the room was still warm from the electric radiators they had used.

"Here" he said, holding out the coat to her. "This is our culprit. It reeks. Must be the material. It's probably one of those cheap non-washable things. I'll get rid of it."

"Oh."  
>Cameron stared at the soggy mass, seemingly a little embarrassed.<p>

John left the room carrying the coat at arm's length and headed for the bathroom next door. Dumping the smelly garment in the bath tub, he decided he could do with a wash and a change of clothes – they were starting to hum as well, and so was he. He slipped of his t-shirt and jeans and threw them into a heap in the corner. He then filled the sink with hot water and soap and gave his face and arms a good scrub. It was late and he was too tired for a shower.  
><em>Tomorrow…<em>

Having cleaned his teeth and slipped on a new pair of boxer shorts from the pile he had found in the bathroom cupboard, which, thank God, his mother must have placed there, John tiptoed to the door and quietly turned the knob. He intended to make a quick dash to his room for new cloths and he didn't want Cameron to see him like this.

"Aargh!"

A pair of jeans and a t-shirt dangling from Cameron's arms greeted him outside the bathroom door.

"I … I … how did you … I mean…" he stammered, whipping a bath towel from its rack and awkwardly wrapping it round himself.

"You have been in here for eight minutes and twenty-nine seconds now. I judged that you had decided to take a shower, so I got you these" she explained to a speechless John, holding out his clothing to him.

John reluctantly took them, his towel slipping through his fingers and dropping to the floor.  
>Cameron's eyes focussed on the dry shower and the splashes of water on the tiles round the sink and then wandered up and down his body.<p>

"It seems I was mistaken" she said with a mischievous grin, turning and leaving John to go bright red once more for Christmas.

…

A few minutes later, a somewhat cleansed and tidied up John emerged from the bathroom and headed for Cameron's room, with the intention of watching over her as she ran her standby scan, after which he would finally be able to get some sleep.

"Come in" her voice sounded from inside her room as he knocked on her door.

Opening it and stepping over the threshold, John stopped dead in his tracks as he caught sight of her. She was sitting on the edge of her bed, her hands daintily placed in her lap, patiently awaiting his return. And she had changed into a pale blue velour tracksuit which John found absolutely adorable.

She offered him a shy smile. "Are you ready, John?"

"Yeah" he said, after he had managed to find his voice again. "But I'd like to show you something first."

Cameron's eyes never left him, as he crossed the room to her bed-side table, picked up his laptop and sat down next to her. John was surprised that the computer booted unusually speedy, just like they always seem to do in movies, but never at home. He selected his image recording programme and played the file he had stored earlier.

"Can you make anything out?" he asked her, placing the laptop on his lap so she could see the images as well. "I mean anything that looks strange or broken."

She gazed at the screen and then at John in amazement. He nearly dropped his laptop as she put her arm around him and gave him a squeeze.

"Thank you, John" she said in a tiny voice.

"What for?"

"For considering me."

A little light-headed, John replayed the file, hoping she would be able to understand what he had not.  
>"Is there anything there that shouldn't be? Down there, right at the bottom?"<p>

Cameron watched closely this time.  
>"Stop" she commanded. "Right there. Can you zoom in a little?"<p>

John enlarged the area she had indicated. It showed a miniscule hole in the side of her port cylinder's wall near the chip-socket.

"There" she pointed at the screen. "That must have happened in the explosion. I pulled part of a piston from the back of my head which had compromised my chip."

She looked at him in a state of shock.  
>"I never considered the damage to the port itself."<p>

Her face scrunched up in confusion and her hand started to twitch. Before she could utter anything, however, John placed his hand over hers and smiled at her.

"We all overlook things, Cameron. It's not the end of the world."

Predictably, the twitching ceased and John patted her knee, causing her to slowly cast her huge eyes from her knee to his face in an absolutely beautiful manner that made him shiver.

"So Mom was right, I guess" he continued. "You … err, shut down because of condensation, right? Because that crack disrupted the air-tight seal."

"Yes. I must not increase my body temperature anymore when I submit myself to cold surroundings" she declared, sounding a bit disappointed.

"Why's that?" John asked, not really understanding what that had to do with anything.

Cameron gave him her impatient 'humans are so slow' look.  
>"Because that's what I did, John. I increased the temperature of my organic tissue by 33% to compensate for the drastic heat loss it had suffered. The sudden rise in temperature to the surroundings of my port must have caused the condensation."<p>

John nodded and powered down the laptop, placing it aside on the bed-side table again. He suddenly brought his fist down hard on the mattress, causing the bed to shake.

"It's all my fault" he croaked, trying to keep a lump from rising in his throat.  
>"If I hadn't dragged you out into the snow like an idiot this would never have happened. I'm sorry, Cameron."<p>

Sighing, he put his head in his hands and turned his back to her. He never saw the look of surprise on her face. He never saw her hand reaching out to him, her mouth opening and closing, her lips forming words she could not utter. It shook her that he actually blamed himself for her ignorance, for her lack of judgement, when she should have realized that the integrity of her port had also been compromised.

Never before had she felt something quite as intense, as all-consuming as the wave of heat that was currently rushing through her system, making her skin tingle, causing sensations she could not categorize. Never before had she felt the impulse that she actually needed to touch him, needed to feel the warmth of his body, needed him to hold her…  
><em>My system must be unstable…<em>

"John, I … I …" was all she managed to force out in a shaky voice.

He turned to find her staring at him wide-eyed, trembling.

"What's wrong, Cameron?" he asked, immediately taking her hands into his and caressing them with his thumbs. A feeling so deep it hurt him welled up in his chest. Never before had he experienced such a desire to tell her how much she meant to him, how much he cared for her, how much he wanted to hold her…

The touch of his hands caused a jolt in her CPU, intensifying the tingling sensation on her skin to a degree close to being subjected to an electric current.

"I need to enter standby" she declared frantically, her eyes glazed and unblinking. "Now."

"Okay" John agreed, letting go of her hands and sitting up straight. "Is there anything you need me to do, anything I need to know?"

Cameron nodded. She could read the concern in his eyes, calming her down. She knew it was time for the truth, and she would not lie. Not to her John, not anymore.

She relaxed and lay back on the bed, fixing him with a wistful gaze.  
>"I need to show you something"<p>

John blinked and frowned, feeling slightly puzzled.

"Put your knees here" she indicated the mattress at both sides of her hips.

John was not so sure he would be able to comply, for his knees seemed to have turned to jelly. Holding his breath, he eased himself into a kneeling position just above her, trying hard not to come into contact with her body below him.

"Give me your hand" Cameron requested.

Tentatively, John leaned forward and held out his right hand to her. She took it and placed it on her chest right above the spot where her heart should have been. Her body jerked and a faint blue tinge crept up behind her irises as his hand made contact. John gulped.

She opened her mouth slightly and spoke in almost a whisper.  
>"What do you feel?"<p>

"N…nothing" John stammered breathlessly, propping himself up next to her with his free arm and looking directly into her eyes. "Is that good?"

"That's good. That's perfect" she assured him nodding, and placing both her hands over his own resting upon her chest.

Seeing John's bewilderment, she continued.  
>"I have no heart, John. I'm a machine. There's no wizard for the tin miss."<p>

"B…but…" John stammered, images of his favourite story replaying in his mind.

As a child, he had often fantasized and seen himself as the tin man in the book. He still felt the same. The lone warrior without a heart. Always on the run, searching for the wizard who could set him free from his past. From his future.  
>From his nightmares…<p>

Cameron placed her index finger on his lips, causing his head to spin. He tried desperately not to faint as she spoke.

"This chip", she pointed at her skull, "this body", she indicated her body below him.  
>"The software is designed to terminate humans. The hardware is designed to terminate humans. That's our sole function."<p>

John frowned and shook his head, not removing his hand from under hers.  
>"But not you."<p>

"No. Not anymore. But what was there is still there and will always be there. I need you to be aware of that."

"So that's why you want to run that scan…"

Revelation set in as John immediately understood what she meant. When Cameron had gone bad, she had really reverted to her original mission, like Derek had said, meaning that the Skynet programming was still buried somewhere in her system.  
><em>My future self must have made a cock-up of reprogramming her…<em>

He sat up and gaped at her, pulling his hand out from under hers. The loss of contact made Cameron immediately feel a brief sensation close to pain course through her system, causing her to wince uncomfortably.

"Yes" she said uneasily, nodding at him. "My system must be compromised. There have been too many … sensations I cannot account for. Things my system does not recognize. It's confusing…"

She broke off, trying to find the right words to describe what she wanted him to know.

"Cameron?" John asked, an idea he had overlooked so far suddenly surfacing.  
>"That day you … went bad. Why didn't you kill me?"<p>

She tilted her head, considered his words for a moment and replayed that hateful situation she had ever since isolated and denied all access to. When she had hurt her John…

"I didn't kill you … because I chose not to…" she breathed, comprehending the gravity of her answer, and gazed at him with wide eyes, her expression so astounded, it made him smile.

"See? You _chose_. That means you've learnt to override your programming. You don't need to run that scan, Cameron."

She tilted her head at him.  
>"But John, those erratic sensations—"<p>

He interrupted her, briefly placing his finger on her lips just as she had done before. She shivered.  
>"They're feelings, Cameron. Emotions. Yeah, I know they're confusing. Heck, sometimes I don't understand them, either."<p>

Shaking his head at how complex human emotions could be and how difficult is sometimes is to describe them, he recalled promising her that he would explain. Or at least try to.

"Sometimes…" he began, feeling breathless owing to the way she was fixing him with shining eyes so full of innocence, almost sedulously listening to his every word.  
>"Sometimes we feel warm for no apparent reason. When we're close to someone we care about, when we trust someone."<br>_Like when I'm explaining something to you…_

She bit her bottom lip in a contemplating manner that made John's heart jackrabbit into his throat.

"Sometimes", he continued hoarsely, "we feel as if there's something passing through our bodies. Like a current of some kind. You know?"

Cameron tilted her head, startled about how he had just pinpointed the exact sensations she had been experiencing without her having described them to him.  
><em>How does he know what I feel…<em>

Seeing her confused frown, John reckoned he had not been explicit enough. Desperately wanting her to understand, he decided he needed to offer her another example.  
>He took a deep breath, his cheeks turning slightly pink.<br>"When you touch me, I get goose bumps. It's like a jolt of electricity, hot and cold at the same time."

She looked down at him sitting on her lower half and then slowly batted her eyelids before she focussed on his face again with that longing expression that rendered him effectively helpless. Following her gaze down to where he was sitting, John turned bright red and instantly removed himself off of her.

Offering him a beautiful smile that seemed to light up the entire room, Cameron remained motionless as an embarrassed John placed himself in a position more applicable to his conscience next to her on the bed.

"Thank you for explaining" she breathed huskily, looking him up and down.  
><em>Now I know why I feel the same…<em>

John gulped. He looked down to the floor to check if those radiators were still on because he noticed he was sweating profusely. Making certain they were off, he wiped his brow and let out a sigh.  
>"So … what about that scan? D'you still wanna do it?"<p>

Cameron considered the possibilities and briefly analyzed the benefits of conducting a scan based on the new data of the insights she had acquired.  
>Taking her eyes off him and looking down apologetically, she murmured "Yes, just as a precaution. So I can be sure."<p>

"That was why you checked under the bed just now, wasn't it? Just to be sure…" he realized, all of a sudden understanding what her fears were all about.  
><em>She doesn't trust her own judgement…<em>

Cameron nodded at him apologetically.

He nodded back at her and placed his hand on her arm to reassure her.  
>"I understand."<p>

"Thank you, John" she said, smiling at him shyly.  
>She then shifted her body so she was lying completely flat and rested her arms at her sides, her eyes staring straight ahead.<p>

"Um …, Cameron—" John blurted out, taking hold of her hand and gazing at her imploringly.  
>A thousand fears coursed through him at seeing Cameron finally prepare to go into standby.<p>

"Don't worry" she whispered gently, trying to reassure him and giving his hand a last squeeze.  
>"I'll be back."<p>

She winked at him and smiled, before her head jerked once and she ceased to move, her features frozen in time.

…


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter Ten**

John sighed. He'd forgotten to ask her how long the scan would take. He had been sitting next to her holding her hand and absent-mindedly stroking it for about six minutes and was slowly starting to become restless.  
><em>I hope she knows what she's doing…<em>

She was lying in exactly the same position as she had been before, after he and Sarah had carted her into her room and struggled to lay her on her bed. Her eyes were wide open, staring vacantly, unblinking.

John looked at his watch.  
><em>Half past one…<em>  
>A shiver ran down his spine. The room suddenly felt colder. His grip on her hand tightened and his breathing became ragged, the fears settling in and taking hold of him.<br>_If she dies…_

He told himself for the second time running that she was a machine and could not just die like that, that this was normal behaviour, that she was merely in standby mode, just like his laptop could be.  
>Then he remembered the faint blue glow he had seen emanating from somewhere behind her irises as she had placed his hand on her chest. She was so alive, so human, so … vulnerable.<br>John bent over her, gazing deep into those dark brown pools, their shine so familiar, calming him down, making him feel … at home.  
><em>Your flashing eyes and sudden smiles are never quite at ease … and neither am I…<em>

"That's going to change, Cameron" he thought aloud, coming to the decision that he was no longer going to allow himself to be mastered by his shyness, nor to permit his existence to be governed by his mother's rules and mantras. He was no longer going to abide by his so-called destiny, becoming a slave to his own future-self.  
><em>The future is now…<em>

"What's going to change, John?"

He jumped back in alarm and nearly fell off the bed, such was his surprise at the sudden unexpected sound of her voice.  
>His earlier resolutions mocking him in the back of his head, a completely speechless John realized he was first going to have to work on his nerves in order to overcome his timorousness.<p>

Cameron batted her eyes and offered him a bright smile, looking positively relaxed.  
>She was back. And she was smiling, which meant she had not found any malicious code or anything else wrong with her system. A relief so pronounced, it made him want to laugh and cry at the same time, flooded through him.<p>

"So you're okay" he managed to breathe, the lump in his throat constricting his voice. "You didn't find anything … bad in there, then?"

She sat up and gazed at him in adoration, the relief on his face telling her that that he had been deeply worried, if not anxious about her while she had been in standby.  
><em>He really did stay with me…<em>

Strong relief also flooded through Cameron as she realized that she was no longer alone, that her John would always care for her, even if this care sometimes came into conflict with her mission to protect him. Seeing the inquiring look of concern on his face she knew she would succeed in combining protection with care, even if she would have to teach John to not let his care for her get in the way of his vigilance.

"No. I found nothing" she replied, smiling. "The results of both scans were identical. You were right, John."  
>Tilting her head, she repeated curiously "What is going to change?"<p>

"You'll see" he said, grinning mischievously. "But first of all I intend to work on my 'scare level', meaning you're not allowed to sneak up on me and make me jump anymore."

"That's a shame. Your little squeaks are rather cute."  
>She fluttered her eyelids at him, an impish smile playing on her lips.<p>

With a mock pout, he poked her in the ribs. She flinched. John's eyebrows shot up his head.

_I don't believe it…_

He poked her in the ribs again. She flinched again.  
><em>Can terminators be ticklish?…<em>

Grinning broadly and saving this new information about Cameron for a later time whenever he needed to get even with her, John got up and held out his hand.

Looking puzzled, Cameron took it and allowed herself to be pulled to her feet.  
>"Where are we going, John?"<p>

He picked up his laptop from her bed-side table and smiled at her.  
>"Over to my room. I thought we'd watch a movie. There's this great Japanese film I downloaded and I wanted to show you. I think you'd like it."<p>

They crossed the room hand in hand bound for the door. Before John could open it, Cameron stopped them in their tracks and met his gaze apologetically.  
>"Not today, John. It's too late. You need to get some sleep. I promised your mother I would ensure that your sleeping patterns would be regular. We'll watch it in the evening after Christmas dinner, okay?" she offered.<p>

"Yeah, I suppose you're right" he admitted, reminding himself of the time and dreading the morning. "Mom's gonna be bursting in soon, anyway."  
><em>And we really should be watching Scrooge…<em>

Relieved that he had given in so easily, Cameron smiled and opened the door. Taking him by the hand, she led them across the landing over to his room.

The air was stuffy and his bed was still unmade as they opened the door and entered. Grinning sheepishly at his kid bedclothes, John decided he would ask Cameron if she would go shopping with him for some decent ones sometime. After all, sheep had gone out of fashion ages ago.  
><em>And I might get myself some new pyjamas while we're at it<em>, he pondered, thinking of the ones in the dresser which he never wore because the sleeves and legs were too short.

Glancing Cameron up and down and wondering what she would look like in pyjamas, or something less inconspicuous, he decided he would ask her _very soon_ if she would go shopping with him.  
><em>We could go to Victoria's Secret and<em>—_ oh shut up, John…_

Shaking his head to rid himself of any other improper thoughts, John let go of her hand and put down his laptop on the desk. Kicking off his shoes, he folded back the covers of his bed and hopped in.  
>Cameron remained standing like a statue and cocked an eyebrow at him, as he pulled the blanket over himself and awkwardly started to pull off his jeans underneath, while at the same time trying hard to keep his shorts on in the process.<p>

"What?" John asked, noticing her demeanour and the tiny smile forming on her lips.

"That" she said grinning, pointing at the jeans which had just emerged from under the sheets and fallen to the floor at the foot of his bed.

John gazed down at the heap of inside-out material on the floor which accounted for his trousers.  
>"Well I couldn't just undress in front of you, could I?" he exclaimed, fruitlessly trying to stem the colour from rising in his cheeks and pulling the blanket up to his eyes.<p>

"It's nothing I haven't seen before" Cameron stated with an evil smirk.

Fortunately, the blanket offered John some form of security by obscuring his cheeks from view. Surpassing red, he had turned purple and was opening and closing his mouth like a frog, squirming at the recollection of their arrival in 2008.

Satisfied that John was lost for words, Cameron gave him a curt nod and strode off purposefully towards the door, swapping her grin for her blank machine expression as she opened it.  
>"Good night, John."<p>

"What? Wait, Cameron. Where are you going?" he inquired hastily, his head popping out from under his blanket like a pod.

Cameron stopped dead without turning to look at him.  
>"I must go and retrieve your mobile phone. Your mother was right, it would constitute a security risk, should anyone find it" she announced in her most monotonous voice.<p>

If she would have been facing him, he would have noticed the inner turmoil currently raging inside her. Her blank face twitched slightly as she regretted every word she said.  
><em>I don't want to lie to you anymore…<em>

"No!" John cried, getting to his feet and completely forgetting he was only wearing shorts.  
>"Confound my security! You're not going back there all alone in the cold. I'm not letting you."<p>

He rushed up to her side, placed his hands on her shoulders and turned her towards him.  
>"Cameron, please. I don't want to lose you again."<p>

It took all the CPU power she could muster to keep her blank face in place and her tears at bay. Knowing she had to betray her John's trust and lie to him again generated a pronounced feeling of pain inside her. She didn't want to lie anymore, but she knew no other alternative. She had been built to infiltrate, lies and cunning had been the best weapons at her disposal, her second names, and even though that was no longer the case, she could not deny her origins.

"I'll be careful, John. I promise" she forced out tonelessly.

Retreating from his touch, she turned her back on him and strode through the door, leaving him standing in a state of shock as she closed it in his face.

She had wanted so much to stay and keep watch over him as he fell asleep. Like he had done for her as she had entered standby. Tears welled up in her eyes as she descended the stairs, threatening to spill any minute.  
><em>I should be with him…<em>

She forced herself to stop second guessing her motives. She had done the right thing. John needed his sleep and she also needed him out of the way to be able to do what she intended to do. It had to be done tonight, there was no other alternative. She had to leave him.  
><em>I'm sorry John…<em>

…

End of part two

Author's note & quotes: 

This story will be continued and concluded in Cameron's Christmas pt.3, which I have already started on and which I will again release as soon as I have completed it.  
>Thank you for reading.<p>

The phrase _Every street lamp's her reminder_ and the scene preceding it is taken from and loosely based on a passage from the song 'Nightswimming' by R.E.M.

"_Oh, tut mir leid. Entschuldigen Sie_" is German for "Oh, pardon me. I'm sorry"

"_Wo haben Sie denn die Lichterkette gefunden? __Wir hatten schon überall danach gesucht._" is German for "Where did you find those lights? We've been looking everywhere for them."

_Notausgang_ and _Ausgang_ are the German terms for 'emergency exit' and 'exit'.

John's revelation about Cameron is taken from Peter Weir's 1975 film of Joan Lindsay's 'Picnic at Hanging Rock' ["_Now I know_" – "_What do you know?_" – "_I know that Cameron _(Miranda, actually)_ is a Botticelli angel_"…].

John's words as he slaps Cameron in the face trying to make her reboot are taken from a similar scene in James Cameron's 1993 film 'The Abyss' ["_You never backed away from anything before – Fight! – Fight!_"]. The guy who played Kyle Reese in T1 also starred in this film…

Cameron's enigmatic words before they are so rudely interrupted are also taken from Peter Weir's 1975 film of Joan Lindsay's 'Picnic at Hanging Rock' ["_Everything … begins … and ends … at exactly the right time and place_"]

Derek's gut-bashing scene was adapted from and inspired by 'Mr. Creosote' of Monty Python's 'The Meaning of Life – The Autumn Years'.

John's description of Cameron while she is lying in standby is a line taken from the song 'Nervously' by the Pet Shop Boys ["_Your flashing eyes and sudden smiles are never quite at ease … and neither am I…_"].

The main characters in the story unfortunately still belong to Twentieth Century Fox…


End file.
